Why is Coventry not in Warks?
HAVE you ever wondered why Coventry is not in Warwickshire?
There are probably many people who think it should be - indeed for many years it was. The city’s historic connections with the county are strong and without Coventry Warwickshire remains a county without a city.
At one point county boundaries also included
Coventry and Solihull, as well as much of Birmingham and until 1888 parts of Tamworth were also in Warwickshire.
Now divided into the districts of North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Bedworth,
Rugby, and Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick, the county’s boundaries as they are today were set in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972.
As well as Coventry and
Solihull, areas that were historically part of Warwickshire include Sutton Coldfield, and even such unlikely suburbs of Birmingham as Erdington, Aston and Edgbaston.
The Edgbaston connection is evidenced by the fact Warwickshire County Cricket Club is based there. These became part of the metropolitan county of the West Midlands (and Sutton Coldfield became part of Birmingham) following the local government shake-up of 1974.
In 1986 the West Midlands County Council was abolished and Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull became metropolitan authorities. However, the
West Midlands county name is still very much alive and recently had new life breathed into it with the creation of the new West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and the election of its mayor Andy Street.
Warwickshire covers 763 square miles, making it the 31st largest county out of the 48 that make up England - North Yorkshire being the largest at 3,212 square miles.
But like Yorkshire and many other counties, Warwickshire’s borders have not remained static.
Coventry was part of Warwickshire for some of its history, but not all of it, and as such would have been the only city in the county. Coventry remains in the centre of the Warwickshire area, and its ties remain strong.
In many respects they are ‘twin’ areas, sharing a chamber of commerce, a local enterprise partnership (LEP) and a BBC radio station. Coventry has been a part of Warwickshire for only some of its history. In 1451 Coventry was separated from Warwickshire and made a county corporate in its own right, called the County of the City of Coventry. In 1842 the county of Coventry was abolished and Coventry was remerged with Warwickshire.