Expert: Mark Smith - 2/14/2011

Question
Dear sir, I'm very interested in the ghost stories of England, but one of my books (Haunted Britain, Copyright 1973) on the haunted locations of England provides a much different description of modern England with alternate counties and the modern map of England has counties that aren't mentioned in the book. For example:
Westmoreland County now seems to be part of Cumbria County. Merseyside and Manchester Counties seem to have been detached from Lancashire County.
Middlesex County is now known as Greater London.
Avon County has been detached from Devonshire County
Sussex County has been divided into East and West as has Yorkshire County into North, South and West.
It's hard enough to locate forgotten English towns and parishs, but now I find myself dealing with county lines that have moved and shifted and vanished within the last fifty years. With all due respect, what happened over there?

Answer
Hello William.
It was the 1972 Local Government Act which took effect on 1 April 1974 that changed the boundaries of many counties. Some smaller ones, such as Westmorland and Rutland, were absorbed into the larger neighbours while some of the larger ones, such as Yorkshire and Sussex, were split into smaller counties. You should be able to find maps on the internet of the situation before and after 1974 to compare. A similar thing happened in Scotland and Wales too.
Mark