Historic County Borders Database

This database contains an entry for each segment of historic county border which has so far been digitised and relased via the Download page. An illustrative extract of the database is presented below:

Segment Code	Segment Name	Grid Ref 1	Grid Ref 2	HCS No.1	HCS No. 2	Notes
0002	CMB-NRK	TF478176	TL652848	17	61	Primary Source Data.
0003	CMB-LNC	TF257075	TF478176	17	52	Primary Source Data.
0004	CMB-NRN	TL194982	TF257075	17	62	Primary Source Data.
0005	CMB-HNT	TL190545	TL194982	17	43	Primary Source Data.
0031	ESE-SFF	TL649435	TM214328	34	81	Primary Source Data. River artificially straightened at TL874407, old course left as border.

Segment code - each segment has a unique 4-digit 'Segment Code'. This is numbered from '0001' - based on the date of digitisation'.

Segment Name - each segment has a unique 'Segment Name'. This formed from the Historic Counties Standard Codes for each of the two counties which share the segment, i.e.

CMB-NRK	Cambridgeshire - Norfolk
CMB-LNC	Cambridgeshire - Lincolnshire

The order of preference is based on alphabetical order.

Where a county has a seaward border, this is formed as:

CNW-SEA	Cornwall - Sea
DVN-SEA_1	Devon - Sea (Segment 1)
DVN-SEA_2	Devon - Sea (Segment 2)

Where the main body of a county comprises two parts (e.g. Lancashire) these are denoted by, e.g. LCS1 and LCS2.

WML-LCS1	Westmorland - Lancashire (southern part)
WML-LCS2	Westmorland - Lancasshire (Furness area)

Each island forms a single segment, denoted thus:

SMS-ISL_1	Somerset Island 1
SMS-ISL_2	Somerset Island 2

Grid Ref 1 - The National Grid reference for the start of the segment.

Grid Ref 2 - The National Grid reference for the end of the segment.

HCS No. 1 - The Historic Counties Standard Number for the first county identified in the Segment Name.

HCS No. 2 - The Historic Counties Standard Number for the second county identified in the Segment Name.

Notes - Any comments relating to the segment.

Digitised Historic County Border Data

The digitised border data are being made available in GoogleEarth (KMZ) and Arview Shape (SHP) format (originally developed by ESRI). The KMZ and Shape files contain a group of polygon objects (one for each historic county contained therein). Two versions of the SHP data are available: one projected onto the Ordnance Survey (British) National Grid; the other projected in longitude and latitide on the WGS84 datum.

To obtain the data, download the file (e.g. Historic_Counties_of_England_OSGB.zip) from the Download page.

The data are contained in zip files. For the KMZ file this is to overcome the problems encountered with some browsers when trying to download KMZs. The zip file can be downloaded and unzipped to produce the KMZ. On Un-Zipping the SHP files, the 4 files which together form a SHP record are obtained:

Historic_Counties_of_England_OSGB.SHP	contains the digitised polygons
Historic_Counties_of_England_OSGB.DBF	a database file containing attribute data relating to the polygons
Historic_Counties_of_England_OSGB.SHX	an index file
Historic_Counties_of_England_OSGB.PRJ	the projection data

The DBF file contains the following attribute data for the polygons:

ID	HCS_CODE	NAME
17	CMB	CAMBRIDGESHIRE
42	HTF	HERTFORDSHIRE
55	MSX	MIDDLESEX
09	BED	BEDFORDSHIRE
43	HNT	HUNTINGDONSHIRE

ID - the Historic Counties Standard Number.

HCS_CODE - the Historic Counties Standard Code.

NAME - the historic county name as listed in the Historic Counties Standard.