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Categorisation of UK regions

Matt N

Matt N

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Hi guys. Over in the Flamingo Land thread, a debate recently ensued with regard to whether Yorkshire was part of the North East or not, and this seems to have triggered a wider conversation about the categorisation of UK regions. With this in mind, I thought it might be an interesting topic to discuss on its own, so as not to detract from the Flamingo Land thread.

For those not aware, the ONS splits England into 9 different statistical regions (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_England). These regions, along with the counties they contain, are as follows:
  • North East England: County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, parts of North Yorkshire (the Tees Valley Combined Authority)
  • North West England: Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside
  • Yorkshire and the Humber: East Riding of Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, most of North Yorkshire, parts of Lincolnshire (North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire)
  • East Midlands: Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, most of Lincolnshire
  • West Midlands: Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands, Worcestershire
  • East of England: Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk
  • London: Greater London, City of London
  • South East England: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey, West Sussex
  • South West England: Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are then just amalgamated into whole regions by the ONS.

Do you agree with these categorisations? Is there anything you’d change? Most divisively, where do you feel the UK’s north-south divide lies? And how exactly do you categorise regions?

Now some of these categorisations are up for debate. For instance, I live in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, which the ONS classifies as South West England, but some consider my county to be more Midlands than South. I live nearly as far from Land’s End in Penzance, which is technically in the same ONS region as me, as I do from the Scottish border at Gretna Green, and the northernmost tip of Gloucestershire, Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds (which I live a fair amount southwest of), is exactly halfway between these places!

In terms of where I’d place the UK’s north-south divide; to me, the Greater Birmingham area has always mentally felt like a dividing line between south and north. Even though I know “the North” doesn’t technically start until Cheshire or South Yorkshire, anything notably higher than Birmingham has always felt like “the North” to me. For instance, Alton Towers, despite being in the West Midlands under the ONS definitions, mentally feels like the North to me; it’s a fair amount north of Birmingham, and the local accent begins to sound really quite Northern by the time you’ve reached Stoke-on-Trent. “Up” becomes “oop”, the hard a comes in (pronouncing “bath” as bath rather than bar-th, for instance), and by the time you reach Stoke, “book” is pronounced “bewk”, which I’ve always thought of as quite a Northern speech trait.

That’s another reason why I’d place the UK’s north-south dividing line in Birmingham; to me, that’s where the local accent begins to sound more northern than southern.

Come to think of it, I actually think local accent is quite possibly a fair metric of categorising regions, as many of the ONS regions do have subtly differing accents to the others.

But do you agree with me? Or do you disagree? Do you have any other thoughts about the categorisation of regions in the UK?

I know it sounds like a random topic, but it was generating discussion in the Flamingo Land thread, and I think there are many interesting aspects you could discuss!
 
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So does that make South Yorkshire part of the north midlands then...(as well as being absolutely shite at footy?)
And Cheshire considers itself too posh by far to be in the north west.
Proven by the fact that absolutely nobody in Cheshire stores their coal in the bath.
 
Hampshire is interesting one being included in the South East as to my ear I’ve always thought that places like Portsmouth have more of a south western twang in their accent rather than a south eastern sounding one. However it’s only 74 miles away from London according to Wikipedia, and I’m wondering if there’s perhaps now quite a bit of a split in the accent between the older generations with a more traditional accent and young people whose accent is more south eastern influenced?
 
I find many people don't know what's in London and what isn't which often leads to confusion. Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports often call themselves London despite being in West Sussex, Essex and Bedfordshire respectively. Warner Bros Studios Tour also seems to be adamant they are in London despite being in Hertfordshire. On the contrary, many people in outer London say they're in Essex, Kent, Surrey or Middlesex despite those areas being transferred into Greater London (and Middlesex being abolished) in 1965.
 
This is the only map that matters:
ITV_Regions_Map.png


Flamingoland is clearly Tyne Tees.

'The North' starts at the northern tip of the Central region.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
Hampshire is interesting one being included in the South East as to my ear I’ve always thought that places like Portsmouth have more of a south western twang in their accent rather than a south eastern sounding one. However it’s only 74 miles away from London according to Wikipedia, and I’m wondering if there’s perhaps now quite a bit of a split in the accent between the older generations with a more traditional accent and young people whose accent is more south eastern influenced?
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On the face of it, I’d have agreed with that one.

I’ve been to Portsmouth, and it didn’t feel like the South East to me. I also wouldn’t say that Paultons Park, towards the west of Hampshire, feels massively South East either; it’s very near to places like Bournemouth and Salisbury, both of which are in the South West.

With that being said, some of the easternmost parts of Hampshire border the likes of West Sussex, and the north east of the county (e.g. Farnborough, Aldershot) is rather close to Surrey and Greater London, so South East might make sense.

I guess I’ve always just thought of Hampshire as “the South”…
 
Thameslink Rail said:
I find many people don't know what's in London and what isn't which often leads to confusion. Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports often call themselves London despite being in West Sussex, Essex and Bedfordshire respectively. Warner Bros Studios Tour also seems to be adamant they are in London despite being in Hertfordshire. On the contrary, many people in outer London say they're in Essex, Kent, Surrey or Middlesex despite those areas being transferred into Greater London (and Middlesex being abolished) in 1965.
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With regards to Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton airports it’s clear that they serve the London area and are entry points to arriving in London. You might know that Gatwick is in West Sussex but to a prospective international visitor looking at flights West Sussex isn’t going to mean much to them.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
With regards to Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton airports it’s clear that they serve the London area and are entry points to arriving in London. You might know that Gatwick is in West Sussex but to a prospective international visitor looking at flights West Sussex isn’t going to mean much to them.
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The problem is that people think those airports are in London and get charged significantly more to get to the capital than they should do, Stansted to London Liverpool Street is £23 (or a £100 fine if you try using an Oyster card) while Heathrow to London Paddington is £5.60. It also means that they get sent to Luton which frankly no one actually should endure.
 
Northern Ireland
Northern Scotland
Central Scotland
Southern Scotland
North Wales
South Wales
The North East
Yorkshire and the Humber
The North West
The West Midlands
The East Midlands
Anglia
London
The South East
The Home Counties
The West
The South West (or Devon and Cornwall)
The South Coast

"The North" is subjective. To me, it starts around about Cheltenham. The East starts after Chippenham.
Matt N said:
For instance, Alton Towers, despite being in the West Midlands under the ONS definitions, mentally feels like the North to me; it’s a fair amount north of Birmingham, and the local accent begins to sound really quite Northern by the time you’ve reached Stoke-on-Trent. “Up” becomes “oop”, the hard a comes in (pronouncing “bath” as bath rather than bar-th, for instance)
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I presume you mean the difference between the rest of the West Midlands and Staffordshire with this? As nobody in the south west pronounces Bath like that. Locally, even in Bath itself (unless you're posh), it's pronounced "Bah-th", or in Bristol it's pronounced "Bah-ff". There's no R in its pronunciation at all with a west accent, with the way we pronounce our R's, if there was you'd all bloody know about it!

Mind you, they're all weird this side of the city down here. Even my kids barely speak English. I say "Loh-erree" the rest of my clan says "Lotchree". I have my dinner at dinner time, they call it "lunch". I have my tea at tea time, they have "dinner". I dollop red sauce on it, they use "ketchup". Weirdos.
 
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Matt.GC said:
I presume you mean the difference between the rest of the West Midlands and Staffordshire with this? As nobody in the south west pronounces Bath like that. Locally, even in Bath itself (unless you're posh), it's pronounced "Bah-th", or in Bristol it's pronounced "Bah-ff". There's no R in its pronunciation at all with a west accent, with the way we pronounce our R's, if there was you'd all bloody know about it!

Mind you, they're all weird this side of the city down here. Even my kids barely speak English. I say "Loh-erree" the rest of my clan says "Lotchree". I have my dinner at dinner time, they call it "lunch". I have my tea at tea time, they have "dinner". I dollop red sauce on it, they use "ketchup". Weirdos.
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Sorry, I should have clarified. I only spelt it like that to try and reinforce the sound difference between the hard a (bath) and the long a (bah-th). I wasn’t saying that anyone pronounces the word bath with an r, I was trying to reinforce the sort of sound that many people in the South would use to pronounce the word. People in the North tend to use the hard a, whereas people in the South often tend to use the long a.

Although I’ve noticed that many people in my area, as well as Wales and other parts of the South West, use a hard a, so perhaps the long a is just a South East and/or RP thing…

I think as someone who uses the long a rather than the hard a and does not have a rhotic accent (I don’t roll my r’s), I often forget that there’s a pronounced r in “ar” sounds for some… to me “ar” and the long a make broadly the same sound. Despite coming from a region with quite a strong South West accent, with rolling r’s and all, my own accent is about as generically British as they come and doesn’t really sound like the local accent at all… I believe the term for it is RP, or Received Pronunciation.
 
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Matt N said:
Sorry, I should have clarified. I only spelt it like that to try and reinforce the sound difference between the hard a (bath) and the long a (bah-th). I wasn’t saying that anyone pronounces the word bath with an r, I was trying to reinforce the sort of sound that many people in the South would use to pronounce the word. People in the North tend to use the hard a, whereas people in the South often tend to use the long a.

Although I’ve noticed that many people in my area, as well as Wales and other parts of the South West, use a hard a, so perhaps the long a is just a South East and/or RP thing…

I think as someone who uses the long a rather than the hard a and does not have a rhotic accent (I don’t roll my r’s), I often forget that there’s a pronounced r in “ar” sounds for some… to me “ar” and the long a make broadly the same sound. Despite coming from a region with quite a strong South West accent, with rolling r’s and all, my own accent is about as generically British as they come and doesn’t really sound like the local accent at all… I believe the term for it is RP, or Received Pronunciation.
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I know what you meant. No rhotic R in any of the south east accents, midlands accents, or RP. So whack an R in Bath and that's pretty much how they say it. Whack are R in anything in the west and all hell breaks loose. Even heard a Ford Fiesta called a "Fiesterrrr" the other day. Bath down here is pronounced similar to how it is in the north only with a longer a. The "th" becoming an f or two in some places.

I know Scottish and Irish accents pronounce an R rhotically, but don't more rural areas of the North also do so? A guy in a pub in Bradford once asked me "Whur yewt from lad, sount like faarma?".

Trust me, you will have an accent even if it's very mild. Someone with keen ears somewhere else on the country will be able to tell. Unless you live in Downton Abbey, it won't be RP. RP is proper King/Jacob Reece-Mogg/1930's BBC continuity announcer stuff. Been trying to hide mine for years as was always told by parents and teachers that the local accent makes you sound "thick" so try to tame it as much as possible. Now I pretty much sound like that Professor Alex Cooper (but obviously not saying clever stuff).
 
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