Everything about City Status In The United Kingdom totally explained
City status in the United Kingdom is granted by the
British monarch to a select group of communities. The status doesn't apply automatically on the basis of any particular criteria, although in
England and Wales it was traditionally given to towns with
diocesan cathedrals. This association between having a cathedral and being called a
city was established in the early 1540s when
King Henry VIII founded dioceses (and therefore cathedrals) in six English towns and also granted them all city status by issuing
letters patent.
City status in Ireland was granted to far fewer communities than in England and Wales, and there are only two pre-nineteenth-century cities in present-day
Northern Ireland. In
Scotland, city status didn't explicitly receive any recognition by the state until the nineteenth century. At that time, a revival of grants of city status took place, first in England, where the grants were accompanied by the establishment of new cathedrals, and later in Scotland and Ireland. In the twentieth century, it was explicitly recognised that the status of city would no longer be bound to the presence of a cathedral, and grants made since have been awarded to communities on a variety of criteria, including population size.
The abolition of some corporate bodies as part of successive local-government reforms, beginning with the
Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840, has deprived some ancient cities of their status; however, letters patent have been issued for most of the affected cities in order to ensure the continuation or restoration of their status. At present,
Rochester is the only former city in the United Kingdom.
History
England and Wales
Ancient cities
Until the 16th century, a town was recognised as a city by the English Crown if it had a
diocesan cathedral within its limits. This means some cities today are very small, because they were unaffected by population growth during the
industrial revolution—notably
Wells (population about 10,000) and
St David's (population about 2,000) (
see Smallest cities in the United Kingdom). After the 16th century, no new dioceses (and no new cities) were created until the 19th century.
1836–1888
In 1836,
Ripon was the first of a number of
new dioceses to be created. Ripon Town Council assumed that this had elevated the town to the rank of a city, and started referring to itself as the
City and Borough of Ripon. The next diocese to be created was
Manchester, and the Borough Council began to informally use the title
city. When
Queen Victoria visited Manchester in 1851, the doubts surrounding the status of the town were raised. The situation was resolved when the borough petitioned for city status, which was granted by letters patent in 1854. This eventually forced Ripon to regularise its position, with its city status being recognised by a local
act of parliament in 1865. The Manchester case established a precedent that any
municipal borough in which an Anglican see was established was entitled to petition for city status. Accordingly,
Truro,
St Albans,
Liverpool,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne and
Wakefield were all officially designated as cities between 1877 and 1888. This wasn't without opposition from the
Home Office, who dismissed St Albans as "a fourth or fifth rate market town" and objected to Wakefield's elevation on grounds of population. In one new diocese,
Southwell, a city wasn't created. This was due to the fact that Southwell was a village without a borough corporation, and therefore couldn't petition the Queen. The diocese covered the counties of
Derbyshire and
Nottinghamshire, and the boroughs of Derby and Nottingham were both disappointed that they wouldn't be able to claim the title of city.
1889–1907
The link with
Anglican dioceses was broken in 1889 when
Birmingham successfully petitioned for city status on the grounds of its large population and history of good local government. At the time of the grant, Birmingham lacked a cathedral, although the parish church later became a cathedral in 1905. This new precedent was followed by other large municipalities, with
Leeds and
Sheffield both becoming cities in 1893, and
Bradford,
Kingston upon Hull and
Nottingham being honoured on the occasion of Queen Victoria's
Golden Jubilee in 1897. The last three had been the largest
county boroughs outside the London area without city status.
Following the
First World War, the King made an official visit to
Leicester in 1919 to commemorate its contributions to the military victory. The borough council had made several applications for city status since 1889, and took the opportunity of the visit to renew its request. Leicester had a population of approximately 230,000 at the previous census, but its petition was granted as an exception to the policy, as it was officially a restoration of a dignity lost in the past. When the county borough of
Stoke on Trent applied for city status in 1925, it was initially refused as it had only 294,000 inhabitants. The decision was overturned, however, as it was felt to have outstanding importance as the centre of the pottery industry. The effective relaxation of the population rule led to applications from
Portsmouth and
Salford. The civil servants in the Home Office were minded to refuse both applications. In particular, Salford was felt to be "merely a scratch collection of 240,000 people cut off from Manchester by the river". Salford's case, however, was considered favourably by the Home Secretary,
William Joynson-Hicks,
MP for a neighbouring constituency of Manchester. Following protests from Portsmouth, which felt it had better credentials as a larger town and as the "first Naval Port of the kingdom", both applications were approved in 1926.
In 1928,
Plymouth submitted an application for city status. As the borough was larger than Portsmouth, and had recently absorbed
Devonport and
East Stonehouse, the King agreed to the request. However, he indicated that he'd "come to an end of city making", and Southampton's application in the following year was turned down. Croydon also applied in 1951, but failed as it was felt not to have a sufficient identity apart from Greater London, and reports on the conduct of local government in the town were unfavourable.
With the establishment of the
Royal Commission on Local Government in England in 1966, city grants were again in abeyance in England. Attempts by Derby, Teesside and Wolverhampton to become cities were not proceeded with.
In Wales,
Swansea campaigned for city status throughout the 1960s. The campaign came to a successful conclusion in 1969, in conjunction with the investiture of
Charles, Prince of Wales.
1974 reorganisation, and new cities
The
Local Government Act 1972 abolished all existing local authorities (other than
parish councils) in England and Wales. This meant that the various local authorities that held city status ceased to exist on
1 April 1974. In order to preserve city status, new letters patent were issued to the
metropolitan boroughs,
non-metropolitan districts or
successor parish councils created by the 1972 Act. There were two exceptions:
charter trustees were established for the City of New Sarum (or Salisbury), and special letters patent preserved the City of Rochester as part of the new Borough of Medway.
In 1977, as part of the celebrations of the
Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II,
Derby received city status. In 1992, on the fortieth anniversary of the monarch's accession, it was announced that another town would be elevated to a city. An innovation on this occasion was that a competition was to be held, with communities being required to submit applications.
Sunderland was the successful applicant.
This was followed in 1994 by the restoration of the dignity to
St David's, historic see of a bishop.
Since 2000, city status has been awarded to four towns by competition on special occasions (see
Modern practice of granting city status below). Three successful applicants in England have become cities, as well as one in Wales. These were
Brighton & Hove and
Wolverhampton in 2000, and
Preston and
Newport in 2002.
Scotland
Scotland had no cities by
royal charter or letters patent prior to 1889. The term
city wasn't always consistently applied, and there were doubts over the number of officially designated cities. The royal burghs of Edinburgh and Perth anciently used the title
civitas, but the term
city doesn't seem to have been used prior to the fifteenth century. Unlike the situation in England, in Scotland there was no link between the presence of a cathedral and the title of
city. Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh were accepted as cities by ancient usage by the eighteenth century, while Perth and Elgin also used the title.
The
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 completely reorganised Scotland's local administration in 1975. All burghs were abolished, and a system of districts created. The four districts of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow had
City included in their titles by the Act. The 1975 districts were replaced with the present council areas by the
Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 in 1996, and the same four cities were designated.
Since the 1996 reorganisation, two more Scottish cities have been designated: Inverness as part of the millennium celebrations, and
Stirling in 2002, to commemorate
Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. In the case of both these cities, there are no city councils and no formal boundaries, and the letters patent simply state that the "town" has the status. In January 2008, a petition to matriculate
armorial bearings for the City of Inverness was refused by
Lord Lyon King of Arms on the grounds that there's no corporate body or legal persona to whom arms can be granted.
Northern Ireland
City status in Ireland tended historically to be granted by royal charter. There are many towns in Ireland with
Church of Ireland cathedrals which have never been called cities. In spite of this,
Armagh was considered a city, by virtue of its being the seat of the
Primate of All Ireland, until the abolition of Armagh's City corporation by the
Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840. The only historic city with a charter in present-day Northern Ireland is
Derry, which was renamed
Londonderry by its city charter. However this move was and has since been highly controversial(see
Derry-Londonderry name dispute).
In 1887, the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated, and the Borough of Belfast submitted a memorial to the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland seeking city status. Belfast based its claim on its similarity to two English boroughs that had received the honour—the seaport of Liverpool and the textile centre of Manchester—and the fact that it had (at the time) a larger population than the City of
Dublin. Following some legal debate, city status was conferred in 1888. The grant of the honour on the grounds of being a large industrial town, rather than a diocesan centre, was unprecedented. Belfast's example was followed by Birmingham and Dundee in England and Scotland respectively. Newry, like Inverness and Stirling in Scotland, has no formal boundaries or city council. The letters patent were presented to representatives of Newry and Mourne District Council on behalf of the city.
Modern practice of granting city status
According to a Memorandum from the Home Office issued in 1927,
If a town wishes to obtain the title of a city the proper method of procedure is to address a petition to the King through the Home Office. It is the duty of the Home Secretary to submit such petitions to his Majesty and to advise his Majesty to the reply to be returned. It is a well-established principle that the grant of the title is only recommended in the case of towns of the first rank in population, size and importance, and having a distinctive character and identity of their own. At the present day, therefore, it's only rarely and in exceptional circumstances that the title is given. The city was unique, as it had no council or charter trustees and no mayor or civic head. In 1979, the Borough of Medway was renamed as Rochester-upon-Medway, and in 1982 further letters patent transferred the city status to the entire borough. On 1 April 1998, the existing local-government districts of Rochester-upon-Medway and Gillingham were abolished and became the new unitary authority of Medway. Since it was the local-government district that officially held city status under the 1982 letters patent, when it was abolished, it also ceased to be a city. The other local-government districts with city status that were abolished around this time (Bath and Hereford) had decided to appoint Charter Trustees to maintain the existence of the city and the mayoralty. However, Rochester-upon-Medway City Council had decided not to. Medway Council apparently only became aware of this when, in 2002, they discovered that Rochester wasn't on the Lord Chancellor's Office's list of cities.
Pretenders
After its unsuccessful attempt to gain city status, the town of Reading, Berkshire started using the phrase "City Centre" on its buses and car-park signs. Reading's immediate urban area has in excess of 230,000 inhabitants, making it one of the 20 largest settlements in the UK and larger than many sizeable cities including Southampton, Portsmouth, and Derby.
In its planning, the government of the day intended Milton Keynes to be a "new city" in scale, and it was referred to as such in contemporary supporting papers, but was gazetted in 1967 as a New Town. It has used the term "City Centre" on its buses and road signs for many years, mainly to avoid confusion with the centres of its pre-existing constituent towns.
Chelmsford's cathedral dates only from 1914 (although the building is much older) and doesn't have city status; nevertheless, its local football team calls itself Chelmsford City F.C.
Dunfermline styles itself "A Twinned City" on the signs welcoming visitors to the town.
Ballymena in Northern Ireland has been known informally as "The City of the Seven Towers" since the nineteenth century.
Elgin and Perth both include city in the names of their council wards despite not having city status. which separates the population of the actual town or city from the population of the area controlled by the council bearing its name.
Applications for city status
City-status grants have been used to mark special royal and other occasions. The first competition was held in 1992, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Queen's reign. Sunderland was the winner. In 1994, two historic seats of Bishoprics—St David's and Armagh—were granted city status. They had been considered cities historically, but this status had lapsed.
For the city applications in 2000, held to celebrate the millennium, the following towns and boroughs requested city status:
England: Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Brighton & Hove, Chelmsford, Colchester, Croydon, Doncaster, Dover, Guildford, Ipswich, Luton, Maidstone, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Preston, Reading, Shrewsbury and Atcham, Southend-on-Sea, Southwark, Stockport, Swindon, Telford and Wrekin, Warrington, Wolverhampton.
Scotland: Ayr, Inverness, Paisley, Stirling.
Wales: Aberystwyth, Machynlleth, Newport, Newtown, St Asaph, Wrexham.
Northern Ireland: Ballymena, Lisburn.
The three winners were Brighton & Hove, Wolverhampton and Inverness, which were subsequently dubbed "Millennium Cities".
For the 2002 applications, held to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee, the entrants included all of the above towns except Southwark, together with Greenwich and Wirral in England, Dumfries in Scotland and Carrickfergus, Coleraine, Craigavon and Newry in Northern Ireland. There was controversy in the rest of the UK—especially in Wales—over the fact that two of the three winners of the 2000 competition were English towns, so 2002 was run as four separate competitions. The winners in Great Britain were Preston in England, Newport in Wales, and Stirling in Scotland. In Northern Ireland it was decided to award city status to two entrants: Lisburn (predominantly unionist) and Newry (predominantly nationalist) so that offence wouldn't be caused to either community. Exeter was awarded Lord Mayoralty status in a separate application.
City status conferment
City status is conferred by letters patent and not by a royal charter (except historically in Ireland). There are twenty towns in England and Wales that were recognised as cities by "ancient prescriptive right"; none of these communities had been formally declared a city, but they'd all used the title since "time immemorial", that is, prior to 3 September 1189.
Scotland
The national church of Scotland, the Church of Scotland, is presbyterian in governance with no bishops or dioceses, and thus has high kirks rather than cathedrals. However, the pre-Reformation dioceses do have extant cathedrals.
Perth is often called the fair city of Perth. Additionally, a number of towns, including St Andrews, Brechin and Elgin, Dunblane and Dunfermline are often referred to as cities, as they've pre-Reformation cathedrals or other historic claims to the name.
Stirling, which was awarded city status in 2002, has never had a cathedral.
Northern Ireland
In Ireland, as noted above, possession of a diocesan cathedral has never (except in the anomalous case of Armagh) been sufficient to attain this status.
In spite of this, the 1911 Encyclopeædia Britannica refers to Armagh (Armagh had lost city status in 1840) and Lisburn as cities. Armagh subsequently regained city status formally in 1994 and Lisburn achieved city status in 2002.
There are four towns in Northern Ireland with Church of Ireland Cathedrals that don't have city status—Clogher, Downpatrick, Dromore and Enniskillen.
Newry is the only city in Northern Ireland that doesn't have a Church of Ireland cathedral within its borders.
Large towns
As noted above, in ordinary discourse, city can refer to any large settlement, with no fixed limit.
There are certain towns which have large urban areas, which could qualify for city status on the grounds of their population size. Some have applied for city status and had the application turned down. Northampton is one of the most populous urban districts not to be a London Borough, metropolitan borough, unitary authority or city; on this basis, the council claims that it's the largest town in England.
The government-published "Key Statistics for Urban Areas 2001"
Reading – 232,662
Dudley – 194,919
Northampton – 189,474
Luton – 185,543
Milton Keynes (urban area) – 184,506
Walsall – 174,994
Bournemouth – 167,527
Southend-on-Sea – 160,257
Swindon – 155,432
Huddersfield – 146,234
See List of English cities by population for further such examples in England.
City status in modern times is sometimes granted to urban areas, and sometimes to local-government areas such as civil parishes and boroughs, the boundaries, and hence populations, of which are not necessarily the same.
The City of Stirling and the City of Inverness provide examples here. Stirling Council's application for city status was specifically for the urban area of the (now former) Royal Burgh of Stirling—proposed city boundaries were included, and so not all of the council area has city status. Equally, the granting of city status to Newport is granted to the "Town of Newport in the County Borough of Newport", while Birmingham's is granted to the "Borough of Birmingham".
This leads to the oddity whereby city status can be granted to areas which include more than one town. "Federal" cities of this type include Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Brighton & Hove—in all these cases a borough was formed to govern an area covering several towns and then city status was granted to the borough afterwards.
The largest local authorities to have applied for city status in the recent competitions are:
London Borough of Croydon – 330,587
Metropolitan Borough of Wirral – 312,293
Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster – 286,866
Metropolitan Borough of Stockport – 284,528
Metropolitan Borough of Bolton – 261,037
Borough of Medway – 249,488
London Borough of Southwark – 244,866
London Borough of Greenwich – 214,403
Borough of Milton Keynes – 207,057
Borough of Northampton – 194,458
Borough of Warrington – 191,084
Borough of Luton – 184,371
Borough of Swindon – 180,051
Borough of Telford & Wrekin – 161,600
Borough of Southend-on-Sea – 159,600Further Information
Get more info on 'City Status In The United Kingdom'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://city_status_in_the_united_kingdom.totallyexplained.com">City status in the United Kingdom Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
