[4] The Office for National Statistics recommended them in the Index of Place Names as a stable, unchanging geography which covers the whole of Great Britain.

At the time of the Domesday Book, northern England comprised Cheshire and Yorkshire (with the north-east being unrecorded).

The remaining counties of the north (Westmorland, Lancashire, Cumberland, Northumberland and Durham) were established in the 12th century.

The sheriff, operating from a royal castle, was the strong hand of the king in his sheriffdom with all embracing duties – judicial, military, financial and administrative.

The central and western Highlands and the Isles (where resistance to Government was strongest) were not assigned to shires until the early modern period, Caithness becoming a sheriffdom in 1503 and Orkney in 1540.