They subsequently gained other roles, notably serving as constituencies and as areas for organising the militia, which was the responsibility of the lord-lieutenant.

The local government counties today cover England except for Greater London and the Isles of Scilly.

The quarter sessions were also gradually given various civil functions, such as providing asylums, maintaining main roads and bridges, and the regulation of alehouses.

[5] From Tudor times onwards a lord-lieutenant was appointed to oversee the militia, taking some of the functions previously held by the sheriff.

[6] Some larger towns and cities were made self-governing counties corporate, starting with London in c. 1132,[c] with the right to hold their own courts and appoint their own sheriffs.

[12] County and other boundaries were not centrally recorded with any accuracy before the 19th century, but were instead known by local knowledge and custom.

When the Ordnance Survey started producing large scale maps, they had to undertake extensive research with locals to establish where exactly the boundaries were.

Boundaries were recorded by the Ordnance Survey gradually in a process which started in 1841 and was not fully completed until 1888.

The unions were administered by elected boards of guardians, and formed the basis for the registration districts created in 1837.

[15] The unions also formed the basis for the sanitary districts created in 1872, which took on various local government functions.

As such, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Suffolk and Sussex retained a single sheriff and lieutenant each, despite being split between multiple administrative counties.

Yorkshire kept a single sheriff, whilst each of its ridings retained a separate lieutenant and formed their own administrative counties.

[23][24] In 1890 the Isle of Wight was made an administrative county whilst remaining part of Hampshire for other purposes.

This lasted until the constituencies were next reviewed in 1918, when they were realigned to nest within the newer versions of the counties.

In 1931 the boundaries between Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire were adjusted to transfer 26 parishes between the three counties, largely to eliminate the remaining exclaves not addressed in 1844.

The County of London was abolished and was replaced by the Greater London administrative area, which also included most of the remaining part of Middlesex (which was abolished as an administrative county) and areas formerly part of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire.

Huntingdonshire was merged with the Soke of Peterborough to form Huntingdon and Peterborough, and the original administrative county of Cambridgeshire was merged with the Isle of Ely to form Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely.

[37][38][39] The Heath government also reformed the judicial functions which had been organised by geographical counties; the Courts Act 1971 abolished the quarter sessions and assizes with effect from 1972.

[40][d] The sheriffs and lieutenants continued to exist, but both roles had lost powers to become largely ceremonial by the time of the 1970s reforms.

Whilst the Heath government had rejected the more radical Radcliffe-Maud proposals, they did still make adjustments to boundaries where they concluded they were necessary to better align with functional economic areas.

Similarly, Gatwick Airport was transferred from Surrey to West Sussex so that it could be in the same county as Crawley, the adjoining new town.

Cumberland and Westmorland were both incorporated into Cumbria (alongside parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire).

The metropolitan counties and Greater London continued to legally exist as geographic areas and retained their high sheriffs and lieutenants despite the loss of their upper-tier councils.

Many of these were districts based on larger towns and cities, including several places that had been county boroughs prior to 1974.

Since the most recent changes in 2023, England outside Greater London and the Isles of Scilly has been divided into 84 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties for local government purposes.

[48] Since 2000, Greater London has had an elected Assembly and Mayor responsible for strategic local government.

On the abolition of Avon, Cleveland and Humberside in 1996 the regulations split the area of Avon for the purposes of lieutenancy between Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol (a change from the pre-1974 position when Bristol had been part of the Gloucestershire lieutenancy).

When Herefordshire, Rutland and Worcestershire were re-established as local government counties in 1997 and 1998 no amendment was made to the 1997 Act regarding them, allowing them to also serve as their own lieutenancy areas.

A recent series of flags, with varying levels of official adoption, have been established in many of the counties by competition or public poll.

[67] Historically they also required the name of the county in which that post town lay to be included as part of the address.