Categorisation in London
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Categorisation in London
This page is part of the England Project.
This is England Project guidance on location (place) categories in London, England.
Definitions:
- "Landing level categories" are the categories placed on individual profiles. They appear in the Category Finder in Edit mode on profile pages.
- "Top level categories" are used to group categories into a structure to allow top-down navigation from Category:England. They should not contain person profiles.
- "Container categories" are mid-level categories, used to group landing level categories into a structure which should be easy to navigate. They should not normally contain person profiles, but may do so if no more precise information is available.
Introduction
The England Project guidance on English Place Name Categories states that profiles should be categorised with "Category:Place, County". This works well for villages and small towns, but is more difficult to apply in larger cities where the appropriate "place" is a locality or district within the urban area. Simply using the name of the wider urban area as the landing level category results in categories with too many profiles to be useful. London is especially difficult. A great many profiles are categorised at too high a level. This guidance is intended to help people to find and use consistently the appropriate landing level location categories.
By "county" the England Project means the 39 historic counties of England, plus the City of London, which has a unique administration unrelated to local government in the rest of England. Colloquially, on the other hand, "London" tends to be used for the entire metropolitan area. This has grown over the centuries from the original City of London to the modern county of Greater London.
The county of Greater London encompasses almost the entire historic county of Middlesex, as well as parts of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire; and completely surrounds (but does not include) the City of London. It comprises 32 London Boroughs. It was created in 1965 by the expansion of the former County of London (itself created in 1889 from parts of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent) into the surrounding counties.
General background to London and its administration over history can be found on this Free Space page: London, England, United Kingdom
How to categorise
It is a general principle of categorisation that the most local level of category possible should always be used. The category for the locality, not the wider borough or city, should be used on profiles.
Unlike the location data fields on profiles (where the correct contemporary version of the place name should be used), there should be only one category for each place in England, named according to its historic county, regardless of later administrative changes. Everywhere in London outside the City of London itself continues to be categorised in the historic counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex or Hertfordshire as appropriate.
The problem with this approach is that someone entering "London" into the category picker as part of the place name will not find it. The category names of places in Greater London (outside the City) are therefore being altered to include "London" in brackets at the end, for example, Category:Earlsfield, Surrey (London). At the same time, the appropriate London Borough is being added as "parent1" in the Category Information Box. In this way, the London Boroughs will become container categories, nested both under Category:Greater London and the appropriate historic county, making it easier for people to find the appropriate place category by navigating the category structure. This is a major exercise, which will take time and effort to implement fully.
We do not use parishes to categorise profiles in England, because of confusion between ecclesiastical parishes, civil parishes and parish churches; but it is appropriate to add categories for the religious congregation to which a person belonged, instead of or in addition to a place category. Religious Congregation categories always have the word "Church" or equivalent as part of the category name.
Existing categories
Category:Greater London is the top level category for the modern ceremonial county. It includes sub-categories for Appointed Officers, Cemeteries, the London Olympics, etc.
Category:City of London is the top level category for the City of London (the "Square Mile", or "the City"). It contains sub-categories for locations with the City. These are the 25 city wards.
- The City, being the historic core of London, has an ancient and sui generis form of local government, which avoided the many local government reforms elsewhere in the country in the 19th and 20th centuries. The wards are a survival of the medieval governmental system that allowed very small areas to exist as self-governing units within the wider city. They are both electoral/political sub-divisions and permanent ceremonial, geographic and administrative entities within the City. They had their boundaries changed in 2003, and to a lesser extent in 2013, though the number of wards and their names did not change.
- Note that the Wards 'Farringdon without' and 'Farringdon within' are combined here for ease of use. Historic documents often refer simply to "Farringdon".
- Maps of the city wards are here:
- 1870 ward map 2003 ward map.
Category:Middlesex is the top level category for the historic county of Middlesex. Like other counties, it contains sub-categories listed alphabetically for the locations within Middlesex defined by "Vision of Britain" as "places".
Category:Surrey is the top level category for the historic county of Surrey. It contains sub-categories listed alphabetically for the locations within Surrey defined by "Vision of Britain" as "places", including those now in Greater London.
Category:Kent is the top level category for the historic county of Kent. It contains sub-categories listed alphabetically for the locations within Kent defined by "Vision of Britain" as "places", including those now in Greater London.
Category:Essex is the top level category for the historic county of Essex. It contains sub-categories listed alphabetically for the locations within Essex defined by "Vision of Britain" as "places", including those now in Greater London.
Category:London, England, Unknown Place is the category for profiles where the exact location within London is not known.
- Please create a category for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Jun 27, 2022.
- London, England Jun 26, 2022.
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My I ask how it is to be implemented?
I am certainly sympathetic to the problem you are working on. I have often been confused when I should be including London in the county of Middlesex or one of the others. The rest of this page seems very clear and useful to me.
We could also use this for (say) places once in Middlesex but now in Surrey e.g. "Ashford, Middlesex (Surrey)". Chris
The Cemeterist Project prefers to use the modern names for cemeteries, so they should all be London - again, the current naming is not consistent.
You are absolutely right: this proposal is only for places within Greater London. If it works there, it could be adopted for other areas which have changed county, e.g. Abingdon, Berkshire (Oxfordshire).
edited by Stephen Heathcote
(I'm assuming this would work in the category picker as anticipated?)
I do appreciate this would be a significant change for the England Project but may be a solution to this recurring problem. . . . . .
The whole issue of the City of Westminster and its definition has taken up quite a lot of my time over the years - it seems to be a similar problem to "London" - it means different things at different times. The City and Liberty of Westminster Category was a part of this work. I think it helped me understand things a bit more but may well not be useful as a Category. I'm not sure I have yet got a ueful definition for "Westminster". . . .
I am very happy to have some help in trying to get this sorted.
edited by Stephen Heathcote
edited by Stephen Heathcote
Wikpedia has some good pages on the wards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wards_of_the_City_of_London and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Governance These pages also have maps of the wards for reference.
As far as I can tell ecclesiastical parishes have no real meaning or role within the city of London other than that of the church at the centre.
A couple of questions arise in my mind:
Do some of the wards extend beyond the City boundary? A few days ago I edited the profiles for some possible relatives of my partner from St Andrew's, Holborn, Middlesex, to St Andrew Holborn Church, City of London - but was St Andrew's parish partly in Middlesex??
If we are categorising to the lowest possible level, do the ecclesiastical parishes represent smaller (and more useful) units?
edited by Stephen Heathcote
Certainly the parishes do not map well and St Andrew's is a great example of some of the problems of Categorisation in general and in London in particular - it was BOTH in the the City of London AND Middlesex! Even worse the boundary varies over time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew_Holborn_(parish) (Hence St Andrew above the bars and St Andrew below the bars. . . .)
I think to answer your question on what is the "useful unit" we should perhaps look at some examples of profiles for 'Londoners' over time. As it turns out I have very few in my own tree, despite having many from the areas immediately surrounding the city I have only a handful from with the city itself. perhaps we should work some examples from each century and see what becomes 'useful"?
I have one ancestral line from Hackney - moved to Derby in the 1830s - not sure if they would be useful examples. My partner's Laman ancestors were from the City, and it was another Laman line I was looking at in Holborn - they may be more instructive. Thomas Laman (1778-) William Laman (bef.1768-1832)
By definition it was not in Surrey at the time as it was a part of the City of London!
Fortunately for me all my British ancestors left Europe before 1860.
1. The Categorisation system isn't flexible enough to have different names for essentially the same category (for example West Ham, Essex and West Ham, Greater London) The average WTer is going to look for a category name that is relevant to the profile that they have created. If there was a way that two or more category names would put the profile in the same category that would go a long way to solving this.
2. The England Project's insistence on the use of the historic counties which hampers Categorisation of the locations in London from 1880 onwards.