In the UK, the word “shire” is roughly synonymous with “county”. Counties are now mainly a ceremonial thing, however, with local government authorities being the main administrative units today.

This map shows the Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLAs) in England, Scotland, and Wales. The ones that have in “-shire” in their name are shown in orange. Hover with your mouse to see an area’s name.


[Standalone version]

The map is a hexagon bin map that shows each authority as a hexagon with the same area. This allows you to see relative proportions by count rather than by geographic area.

The “shire counties” in England refered to the counties in the middle of the country, as shown on this map from Wikipedia (red indicates “-shire” counties, orange indicates where the “-shire” suffix is occasionally used):

EnglandTraditionalShires

Visualization type: grid map, hexagon bin map

Data source: ODI Leeds hexmaps, JSON, 9.6 KB

Technical notes: generated using d3-hexjson; code

See also: Wikipedia page for “Shire”