There is one word that all the News Stations are missing out apropos immigrants in South Africa. Illegal. Let me repeat that.. Just too many people, outstaying a holiday visa, for months, years, even, in South Africa. Legal immigration is fine.
Englandโs historic counties are far older than many people realise.
We have been working through a 1692 edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with its Latin translation, to refine our timeline of when Englandโs counties first appear as shires or counties.
That has allowed us to tighten several early dates - including Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Berkshire - and strengthen the central point:
Most of Englandโs historic counties were already in existence before the Norman Conquest in 1066.
This timeline is the result of careful source-led work through chronicles, census reports and medieval records - separating county history from later council boundaries, and early kingdoms from later shires.
Englandโs county story is not a Victorian invention.
It is written deep into the earliest records of the country.