Borough

In the Middle Ages, boroughs were settlements in England that were granted some self-government; burghs were the Scottish equivalent.

Alfred set up a system of defensive strong points (Burhs); in order to maintain these particular settlements, he granted them a degree of autonomy.

A number of other European languages have cognate words that were borrowed from the Germanic languages during the Middle Ages, including brog in Irish, bwr or bwrc, meaning "wall, rampart" in Welsh, bourg in French, burg in Catalan (in Catalonia there is a town named Burg), borgo in Italian, burgo in Portuguese, Galician and Castilian (hence the castilian place-name Burgos, galician place-names O Burgo and Malburgo), the -bork of Lębork and Malbork in Polish and the -bor of Maribor in Slovenian.

In some cases, the 'berg' element in place names has converged towards burg/borough; for instance Farnborough, from fernaberga (fern-hill).

In Quebec, the term borough is generally used as the English translation of arrondissement, referring to an administrative division of a municipality, or a district.

Those included Soacha in Bogotá, Bello, La Estrella, Sabaneta, Envigado and Itagüí on Medellín.

There are four borough districts designated by the Local Government Reform Act 2014: Clonmel, Drogheda, Sligo, and Wexford.

[3] Historically, there were 117 parliamentary boroughs in the Irish House of Commons, of which 80 were disfranchised by the Acts of Union 1800.

Under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, six of these became county boroughs: Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Derry, Limerick and Waterford.

From 1921, Belfast and Derry were part of Northern Ireland and stayed within the United Kingdom on the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.

[4][5] The county boroughs in the Republic of Ireland were redesignated as "cities" under the Local Government Act 2001.

However, no borough was actually created under law until 2005–2006, when Neve Monosson and Maccabim-Re'ut, both communal settlements (Heb: yishuv kehilati) founded in 1953 and 1984, respectively, were declared to be autonomous municipal boroughs (Heb: vaad rova ironi), within their mergers with the towns of Yehud and Modi'in.

Similar structures have been created under different types of legal status over the years in Israel, notably Kiryat Haim in Haifa, Jaffa in Tel Aviv-Yafo and Ramot and Gilo in Jerusalem.

However, Neve Monosson is the first example of a full municipal borough actually declared under law by the Minister of the Interior, under a model subsequently adopted in Maccabim-Re'ut as well.

In the 1980s, some boroughs and cities began to be merged with their surrounding counties to form districts with a mixed urban and rural population.

These boroughs were generally governed by a self-selecting corporation (i.e., when a member died or resigned his replacement would be by co-option).

As part of a large-scale reform of local government in England and Wales in 1974, municipal boroughs were finally abolished (having become increasingly irrelevant).

A successor body is allowed to use the regalia of the old corporation, and appoint ceremonial office holders such as sword and mace bearers as provided in their original charters.

Until 1974, this was a status that denoted towns with a certain type of local government (a municipal corporation, or a self-governing body).

Districts may apply to the British Crown for the grant of borough status upon advice of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.