Historical and alternative regions of England


is divided by a number of different regional schemes for various purposes. Since the creation of the Government Office Regions in 1994 and their adoption for statistical purposes in 1999, some historical regional schemes have become obsolete. However, many alternative regional designations also exist and continue to be widely used.

Alternative

Cultural

Informal and overlapping regional designations are often used to describe areas of England. They include:
  • Midlands, often considered interchangeable with Mercia
  • *
  • *Welsh Marches
  • *Staffordshire Potteries
  • *Three Counties
  • Northern England
  • *Scottish Marches
  • *Yorkshire
  • Southern England
  • * The Hundred Parishes
  • *Home Counties
  • **M4 corridor
  • ***Thames Valley
  • * Cinque Ports
  • *West Country, often considered interchangeable with Wessex
  • *Cotswolds
  • *Weald

    Heptarchy

, former kingdom names which did not become counties have continued to be recognised by organisations as regions:
include:
  • Peak District
  • Lake District
  • Dartmoor
  • Exmoor
  • North York Moors
  • Northumberland National Park
  • The Broads
  • New Forest
  • Yorkshire Dales
  • South Downs

    Britain in Bloom regions

divides England into 12 regions, bearing a mixture of government regions with some altered names. It also includes Cumbria, Thames-and-Chilterns and part of south east and south west as South-and-South-West.

National Trust

The National Trust has 10 regional offices in England. These are
Postcodes are used as alternatives to administrative units for statistics. Some areas and districts are close to geographic terminology where administrative borders differ, such as:

Before 500

was a Brythonic kingdom in present-day part of South West England.

500–1066

After the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, the area now known as England became divided into seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex. A number of other smaller political divisions and sub-kingdoms existed. The kingdoms were eventually united into the Kingdom of England in a process beginning with Egbert of Wessex in 829 and completed by King Edred in 954. The Norse kingdom of Jorvik, also known as Scandinavian Yorkshire was not annexed into England until 1066 and the Harrying of the North.

1066–1655

Counties shared a sheriff for varying lengths of time, some for centuries:
During The Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell experimented with the Rule of the Major-Generals. There were ten regional associations covering England and Wales administered by majors-general. Ireland under Major-General Henry Cromwell, and Scotland under Major-General George Monck were in administrations already agreed upon and were not part of the scheme.

World War II

1945–1994

Economic planning regions

Eight economic planning regions were named by the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, George Brown in December 1964. These were:
Before the adoption of the government office regions for statistics, there were eight 'standard statistical regions':
  1. North – current North East plus Cumbria
  2. North West – current North West less Cumbria
  3. Yorkshire and Humberside – as current Yorkshire and The Humber
  4. West Midlands – as now
  5. East Midlands – as now
  6. East Anglia – Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire
  7. South West – as now
  8. South East – as now, plus Greater London, Bedfordshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire

    Civil defence regions

The present government office regions closely resemble Civil Defence Regions. During the latter part of the Cold War, the United Kingdom was divided into 11 such regions, most of which were divided themselves into sub-regions. The regions were numbered as shown in the list, numbers for sub-regions were of the form 11.
The regions were based on pre-Second World War regions, but were substantially altered in the 1970s, with the merger of South East and Southern regions, and alterations in the north. They were again altered in 1984, to merge the English regions 1 and 2 to become a single North East region, and Scotland's two southern regions becoming a single South Zone.
1980s
From the mid-1980s, the eight English Civil Defence Regions were as follows :
  1. North East England
  2. # – Cleveland/Durham/Northumberland/Tyne and Wear
  3. # – Humberside/North Yorkshire/South Yorkshire/West Yorkshire
  4. East Midlands
  5. #Derbyshire/Lincolnshire/Nottinghamshire
  6. #Leicestershire/Northamptonshire
  7. East of England
  8. # – Cambridgeshire/Norfolk/Suffolk
  9. #Bedfordshire/Essex/Hertfordshire
  10. Greater London – see Civil defence centres in London for sub-regions
  11. South East England
  12. #East Sussex/Kent/Surrey/West Sussex
  13. #Berkshire/Buckinghamshire/Hampshire/Isle of Wight/Oxfordshire
  14. South West England
  15. #Avon/Dorset/Gloucestershire/Somerset/Wiltshire
  16. #Cornwall/Devon
  17. West Midlands
  18. #Staffordshire/Warwickshire/West Midlands
  19. #Hereford and Worcester/Shropshire
  20. North West England
  21. #Cumbria/Lancashire
  22. #Cheshire/Greater Manchester/Merseyside

    Redcliffe-Maud provinces

The Redcliffe-Maud Report produced by the Royal Commission on local government reform in 1969 recommended the creation of eight provinces. In approximate terms, these were to be:
  1. North East – per North East England
  2. Yorkshire – per Yorkshire and the Humber
  3. North West – per North West England, excluding southern Cheshire
  4. West Midlands – per West Midlands, including southern Cheshire
  5. East Midlands – per East Midlands, less Northamptonshire and mid Lincolnshire
  6. South West – per South West England
  7. East Anglia – Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, northern Essex, southern Lincolnshire
  8. South East – South East England and Greater London with Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, southern Essex