[1][2] It lists those places that have been granted city status by letters patent or royal charter.
In other cases, such as the cities of Canterbury and Lancaster, the status applies to a local government district which extends over a number of towns and rural areas outside the main settlement proper.
The number increased as part of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations by the addition of Stanley in the Falkland Islands and Douglas in the Isle of Man.
The British clerics of the early Middle Ages later preserved a traditional list of the "28 Cities" (Old Welsh: cair) which was mentioned in De Excidio Britanniae [c] and Historia Brittonum.
[d] The usual criterion in early modern Britain was the presence of a cathedral, particularly after King Henry VIII granted letters patent establishing six new cities when he established a series of new dioceses of the Church of England in the 1540s as part of the English Reformation.
On the basis of its size, importance, and regular government, Belfast was elevated in spite of its lack of a cathedral in 1888; other large municipalities followed, while smaller applicants began to be rejected.
The Local Government Act 1972 effectively eliminated all authorities holding city status outside Greater London on 1 April 1974; most of their replacements were confirmed in their predecessor's status—even in cases such as the 1974–2023 City of Carlisle district, where much of the local authority area was undeveloped countryside—but the Borough of Medway was not permitted to continue Rochester's title.
Scottish towns irregularly applied the description to themselves, but were formally organised as royal burghs; the special rights of these were preserved by Article XXI of the Treaty of Union which established the single state of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.
[11] Edinburgh and Glasgow were confirmed as cities "by ancient usage" in the 18th century,[5] as was Aberdeen,[12] and this was later reconfirmed in the Act enlarging the burgh in 1891.
Dundee was granted letters patent in 1889 and Elgin and Perth were recognised as cities by the Home Office in 1972, before the privilege was removed by the Scottish Local Government Act of 1973.