Boundary Changes for London and Surrounding Counties

James Loveluck, December 2008

Prior to 1889, except for the City of London (a very small area basically defined by the old city wall), all the parishes and boroughs around London were either in Middlesex (north of the river), Surrey, or Kent (south of the river). In 1889 the County of London was created from parts of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent - it corresponded geographically to what is now inner London. The City of London, although it was inside this area, was a separate administrative entity. The names of some places changed in 1899, when the County of London was divided into 28 metropolitan boroughs. Then in 1965 these 28 metropolitan boroughs got amalgamated into 12 Inner London boroughs, and joined together with 20 new Outer London boroughs to form Greater London. Some of the Middlesex districts did not get included in the County of London in 1889, but it seems that these were only the most outlying ones. So this would mean that prior to 1889 pretty well everything (except the City of London) was Middlesex, whereas from 1889 onwards Middlesex was just the outlying districts, and pretty well everything else was London.

There's a very good summary of the changes on the following Web page:
http://www.genealogyinengland.com/Information/londonboroughs.htm
which shows the mapping between post 1965 London boroughs, their 1899 equivalents (i.e after the formation of the County of London in 1889 and the re-naming of the boroughs in 1899) and where they were situated prior to 1889 (in Middlesex, Surrey or Kent). There is also useful material and other links on the Genuki web site, including:
For the last four references, the links for each district lead to information on which county(ies) the district, and/or sub-districts, belonged to during different periods.

The boundary changes described above affected the registration districts used for the GRO index of civil registrations of births, marriages and deaths. For census returns, there is an additional complication, which is described in the following paragraphs taken from the Genuki page dealing with Middlesex censuses:

From 1851, the Registrar-General grouped together the census returns from those parts of Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey which formed the "metropolitan" area commonly called London - i.e. the built-up areas - as a separate "census county". This area was used as the basis of the area governed by the Metropolitan Board of Works and later formed with few alterations the new County of London when it was created in 1889. S&N have a map of this area <http://www.genealogysupplies.com/census_info.htm> . The areas covered include Paddington, Kensington, Fulham, Chelsea, St George Hanover Square, Westminster, Marylebone, Hampstead, Pancras, Islington, Hackney, St Giles, Strand, Holborn, London City, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St George in the East, Stepney, Mile End Old Town, Poplar, St Saviour, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Camberwell, Greenwich, Lewisham and Woolwich.

The rest of the county remained under the name of Middlesex.
It appears that the definition of the City of London also underwent some changes in 1869. Up to 1869 it was called the City of London, and consisted of essentially all the parishes within the ancient city wall; see the Genuki page for the City of London Registration District for a list of the 98 parishes (there is also Whitefriars at the end, which was not a parish, or at least there is no church). After 1869, this district was amalgamated with East London and West London districts to form London City Registration District. This seems to have added a relatively small number of parishes (5 from East London, 11 from West London) which were just outside the old city wall.

There used to be detailed descriptions and pictures of many of the City of London churches on Steve James' Steeljam web site, together with a very useful map showing where each was located. The map is still available on the Internet Archive (be patient, it takes a while to load), together with the detailed descriptions for most of the parishes; however, the pictures of the churches are no longer available. There are some photos and short descriptions of City of London Parish Churches on the geograph web site, which has useful links to other sources.

Finally, the Catalogue of the National Archives web site is the authoritative source of information concerning (among other things) which counties places belong to. If one has a census reference, one can type it into the "Search for" box in the format "Series code/piece number" (e.g. RG11/719 will find Greenwich in the 1881 census).