Talk:Swineshead, Huntingdonshire

County

Swineshead started bouncing back and forth between Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire in April 2014.

The fixed policy on Wikishire is to use the Historic Counties Standard published by the Historic Counties Trust; the policy is found here. The Standard places Swineshead unambiguously in Huntingdonshire, and so the article should remain "Swineshead, Huntingdonshire" and be so categorised.

The village is in a detached part of Huntingdonshire, "locally situate" in Bedfordshire; the Gazetteer of British Place Names specifies it as "Hunts (det), locally in Beds". The question of detached parts is examined in the Standard and a distinction is made between the parts affected by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 and those unaffected by it. There is ambiguity in relation to the detached parts affected by the Act but it is accepted that they can be treated as part of the surrounding county, and we follow that on Wikishire: Halesowen for example is described as Worcestershire, not Shropshire, though the Shropshire connection is covered in the article. Those detached parts ignored by the Act remain part of their own county.

Swineshead was unaffected by the Act (when county councils were created, Swineshead remained under Hunts CC in the initial years, until adminstratively swapped for Tilbrook). Therefore it remains a Huntingdonshire village according to the Standard.

The interactive county map on Wikishire does not yet deal with the detached parts – that is a refinement to come later, so on that map Swineshead does appear in Bedfordshire and Dudley in Staffordshire. The appearance on the map does not affect the position under the Historic Counties Standard however, and that Standard is what we follow.

Root 19:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)