A registration county was, in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, a statistical unit used for the registration of births, deaths and marriages and for the output of

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

information. In

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

registration counties are used for land registration purposes.

England and Wales

The Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836 divided England and Wales into

registration district A registration district in the United Kingdom is a type of administrative region which exists for the purpose of civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths and civil partnerships. It has also been used as the basis for the collation of ...

s. The districts were not innovations, however, but were identical to the

poor law union A poor law union was a geographical territory, and early local government unit, in Great Britain and Ireland. Poor law unions existed in England and Wales from 1834 to 1930 for the administration of poor relief. Prior to the Poor Law Amendment ...

s already in existence. Unions had been formed by the grouping parishes surrounding towns in which a workhouse was situated without reference to geographical county boundaries. Many PLUs included areas in two or more civil counties. Registration counties (also known as poor law counties) were formed by the aggregation of registration districts by reference to which county the workhouse was situated in. Accordingly, the boundaries of registration counties rarely coincided with those of the civil county. Attempts to establish a single set of county boundaries in the 1880s were unsuccessful. The registration counties were used in the compilation of census results from 1851 to 1911.

Ireland

Civil registration was introduced to

in 1864, based upon the English model. Registration counties were formed for statistical purposes in a similar manner by the grouping of poor law unions. Population data for the 1871 and 1881 censuses of Ireland was published for the registration counties.

Scotland

In Scotland registration districts were introduced in 1855, and registration counties were used in subsequent censuses. 34 counties are used in

for land registration purposes, which is one higher than the Sasine register. The additional county, within the 34 counties, is the Sea which is used when land is being reclaimed from the ocean. Land registration by county was introduced by the Land Registers (Scotland) Act 1868. The Act provided that in future all

writ In common law, a writ is a formal written order issued by a body with administrative or judicial jurisdiction; in modern usage, this body is generally a court. Warrant (legal), Warrants, prerogative writs, subpoenas, and ''certiorari'' are commo ...

s relating to lands and heritages in Scotland should be recorded in "presentment books", with a different series for each county. For the purposes of the Act the Barony and Regality of Glasgow and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright were to be treated as counties. There are two paired counties that were under a single

sheriff A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the , which is common ...

in 1868: Ross & Cromarty and Orkney & Zetland. The 1868 legislation was replaced by the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 1979. The 1979 Act allowed for the date and areas of operation to be fixed by statutory instrument.Land Registration (Scotland) Act 1979 (1979 C.33) It was brought into operation on a phased basis using the 1868 counties, starting with the County of Renfrew on 6 April 1981. The implementation was completed on 1 April 2003 when the final tranche of registration counties were operational.

References

{{Reflist

External links

*http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/types/type_page.jsp?unit_type=PR_CNTY
Map of Registration counties of Scotland
Counties of the United Kingdom Geography of the United Kingdom Administrative divisions of Scotland

England and Wales

Ireland

Scotland

See also

References

External links