Quote ="Maccbull_BigBullyBooaza"Greater Manchester was originally called East Lancashire (I think). Humberside has since split with the land north of the river Humber becoming East yorkshire and the area south of the river becoming north lincolnshire.
A number of these counties actually knicked bits of Yorkshire Saddleworth is now Greater Manchester and Middlesborough and Stockton were originally part of the North Riding.'"
Don't think so about Greater Manchester's name (although you are right about the Saddleworth area). Prior to the county being created in 1974 most of that area was part of Lancashire (the rest was nicked from Yorkshire and Cheshire) although most of it was represented by the various self-governing county boroughs anyway even if still within the ceremonial counties.
I thought we'd already discussed what happened to (the late, unlamented) Humberside? I'm sure they only created it as an excuse to build the Humber Bridge - although I remember years ago, when doing work at British Steel Shorpe, being told that the theory about the bridge and Humberside was - apparently - that there was a shortage of male labour in Shorpe to work in the (then) three steel complexes, and a shortage of female labour in Hull, to work in all the offices. Therefore a need to have all the good (?) men of Hull commuting south over the bridge and all the good (??) women of Shorpe commuting north. That's what they told me Anyway! But then of course they shut two of the three steel plants and expanded but heavily automated the third, and office clerks got replaced with computers, so that logic sort of disappeared.
I mentioned Middlesborough as an example of a town that got hacked off from Yorkshire to become part of Cleveland? Stockton proper - town centre and all - was never in the North Riding though - it was in County Durham. the part of the old Stockton borough where it overflowed south of the Tees was in the North Riding - think this is the bit you are referring to?
The other big bit of Yorkshire that got hacked off, thats not been mentioned yet, was the urbanised Barnoldswick/Earby area, between Skipton and Colne, and the large rural Yorkshire part of the Forest of Bowland. Lancashire (the new county) grabbed that quite large area in 1974. Thieving gits!
Not all one-sided though - IIRC South Yorkshire nibbled bits off Derbyshire. I recall once walking up the hill out of Sheffield centre towards Norton Woodseats and being told if we walked (well OK staggered...it WAS early hours!
) much further we would have been be in Derbyshire only a couple of years before.
And then of course a bit of South Yorkshire suddenly and inexplicably became part of West Yorkshire only a few years ago...summat to do with a certain RL team that used to play at the Don Valley IIRC?
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