A registration county was, in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

and

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

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

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...

information. In

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

registration counties are used for land registration purposes.

England and Wales

The Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836 divided England and Wales into registration districts. The districts were not innovations, however, but were identical to the poor law unions already in existence. Unions had been formed by the grouping parishes surrounding towns in which a

workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''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 Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events ( births, marriages, and deaths) of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database has different names in different countries and even in differ ...

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 (Anglo-Saxon ''gewrit'', Latin ''breve'') is a formal written order issued by a body with administrative or judicial jurisdiction; in modern usage, this body is generally a court. Warrants, prerogative writs, subpoenas, a ...

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 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 Renfrewshire or the County of Renfrew is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It contains the local government council areas of Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire, as ...

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