The Vice county system provides a convenient means of sub-dividing the UK and Ireland into manageable regions for compiling wildlife records and habitat information.
| Figure 1. The Vice County system was first published by Hewett Watson in 1852, dividing England, Scotland and Wales into 112 regions. Each Vice County is roughly half the size of traditional counties (hence the name), and based on the county borders at that time. |
Why use Vice Counties?
For most organisations involved in wildlife recording, the UK as a whole (or even England, Scotland and Wales separately) represents too large an area for compiling records. Although the (administrative) counties appear to offer a more manageable regional basis for record collation, county borders are quite frequently revised, mainly for political reasons. This has the unfortunate side-effect of introducing some unusual anomalies into wildlife records, for example;
- records for regions which pass from one county to another are collated by different Records Centres (or Local Authorities) at different times, fragmenting long-term trends.
- more surprisingly, some immobile species (such as rare plants) may appear to move from county to county over time as a result of boundary-revisions.
At first sight the Watsonian Vice county system seems to add unnecessary complication to wildlife recording; however for collating wildlife information on a regional basis it offers a number of distinct advantages:
- VC borders are invariable (dating back to the original specification)
- VC names are unique and fixed (immune to changes in County names)
- region sizes are broadly similar
Vice counties are generally referred to by codes (see Table below). As most naturalists work wholly within one or at most several vice counties, it is unnecessary to remember VC codes for more these.
In general the Vice County system makes it easier to analyse and understand species distributions in the UK, and particularly how these change with time. This is more evident with static or sedentary species (plants, fungi, etc) than highly mobile species (butterflies and moths, birds, bats), and different recording groups place different emphasis on using the Vice County system.
Vice Counties of Great Britain and Ireland
| VC code | Coverage | Administrative region |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | West Cornwall with Scilly | England |
| 02 | East Cornwall | England |
| 03 | South Devon | England |
| 04 | North Devon | England |
| 05 | South Somerset | England |
| 06 | North Somerset | England |
| 07 | North Wiltshire | England |
| 08 | South Wiltshire | England |
| 09 | Dorset | England |
| 10 | Isle of Wight | England |
| 11 | South Hampshire | England |
| 12 | North Hampshire | England |
| 13 | West Sussex | England |
| 14 | East Sussex | England |
| 15 | East Kent | England |
| 16 | West Kent | England |
| 17 | Surrey | England |
| 18 | South Essex | England |
| 19 | North Essex | England |
| 20 | Hertfordshire | England |
| 21 | Middlesex | England |
| 22 | Berkshire | England |
| 23 | Oxfordshire | England |
| 24 | Buckinghamshire | England |
| 25 | East Suffolk | England |
| 26 | West Suffolk | England |
| 27 | East Norfolk | England |
| 28 | West Norfolk | England |
| 29 | Cambridgeshire | England |
| 30 | Bedfordshire | England |
| 31 | Huntingdonshire | England |
| 32 | Northamptonshire | England |
| 33 | East Gloucestershire | England |
| 34 | West Gloucestershire | England |
| 35 | Monmouthshire | Wales |
| 36 | Herefordshire | England |
| 37 | Worcestershire | England |
| 38 | Warwickshire | England |
| 39 | Staffordshire | England |
| 40 | Shropshire | England |
| 41 | Glamorgan | Wales |
| 42 | Breconshire | Wales |
| 43 | Radnorshire | Wales |
| 44 | Carmarthenshire | Wales |
| 45 | Pembrokeshire | Wales |
| 46 | Cardiganshire | Wales |
| 47 | Montgomeryshire | Wales |
| 48 | Merioneth | Wales |
| 49 | Caernarvonshire | Wales |
| 50 | Denbighshire | Wales |
| 51 | Flintshire | Wales |
| 52 | Anglesey | Wales |
| 53 | South Lincolnshire | England |
| 54 | North Lincolnshire | England |
| 55 | Leicestershire with Rutland | England |
| 56 | Nottinghamshire | England |
| 57 | Derbyshire | England |
| 58 | Cheshire | England |
| 59 | South Lancashire | England |
| 60 | West Lancashire | England |
| 61 | South-east Yorkshire | England |
| 62 | North-east Yorkshire | England |
| 63 | South-west Yorkshire | England |
| 64 | Mid-west Yorkshire | England |
| 65 | North-west Yorkshire | England |
| 66 | Durham | England |
| 67 | South Northumberland | England |
| 68 | North Northumberland | England |
| 69 | Westmoreland with Furness | England |
| 70 | Cumberland | England |
| 71 | Isle of Man | Isle of Man |
| 72 | Dumfriesshire | Scotland |
| 73 | Kircudbrightshire | Scotland |
| 74 | Wigtownshire | Scotland |
| 75 | Ayrshire | Scotland |
| 76 | Renfrewshire | Scotland |
| 77 | Lanarkshire | Scotland |
| 78 | Peebleshire | Scotland |
| 79 | Selkirkshire | Scotland |
| 80 | Roxburghshire | Scotland |
| 81 | Berwickshire | Scotland |
| 82 | East Lothian | Scotland |
| 83 | Midlothian | Scotland |
| 84 | West Lothian | Scotland |
| 85 | Fife | Scotland |
| 86 | Stirlingshire | Scotland |
| 87 | West Perthshire | Scotland |
| 88 | Mid Perthshire | Scotland |
| 89 | East Perthshire | Scotland |
| 90 | Angus | Scotland |
| 91 | Kincardineshire | Scotland |
| 92 | South Aberdeenshire | Scotland |
| 93 | North Aberdeenshire | Scotland |
| 94 | Banffshire | Scotland |
| 95 | Moray | Scotland |
| 96 | Easterness | Scotland |
| 97 | Westerness | Scotland |
| 98 | Main Argyll | Scotland |
| 99 | Dunbartonshire | Scotland |
| 100 | Clyde Isles | Scotland |
| 101 | Kintyre | Scotland |
| 102 | South Ebudes | Scotland |
| 103 | Mid Ebudes | Scotland |
| 104 | North Ebudes | Scotland |
| 105 | West Ross | Scotland |
| 106 | East Ross | Scotland |
| 107 | East Sutherland | Scotland |
| 108 | West Sutherland | Scotland |
| 109 | Caithness | Scotland |
| 110 | Outer Hebrides | Scotland |
| 111 | Orkney | Scotland |
| 112 | Shetland | Scotland |
| 113 / C | Channel Islands | Channel Islands |
| H1 | South Kerry | Ireland |
| H2 | North Kerry | Ireland |
| H3 | West Cork | Ireland |
| H4 | Mid-Cork | Ireland |
| H5 | East Cork | Ireland |
| H6 | Waterford | Ireland |
| H7 | South Tipperary | Ireland |
| H8 | Limerick | Ireland |
| H9 | Clare | Ireland |
| H10 | North Tipperary | Ireland |
| H11 | Kilkenny | Ireland |
| H12 | Wexford | Ireland |
| H13 | Carlow | Ireland |
| H14 | Laois | Ireland |
| H15 | South-east Galway | Ireland |
| H16 | West Galway | Ireland |
| H17 | North-east Galway | Ireland |
| H18 | Offaly | Ireland |
| H19 | Kildare | Ireland |
| H20 | Wicklow | Ireland |
| H21 | Dublin | Ireland |
| H22 | Meath | Ireland |
| H23 | Westmeath | Ireland |
| H24 | Longford | Ireland |
| H25 | Roscommon | Ireland |
| H26 | East Mayo | Ireland |
| H27 | West Mayo | Ireland |
| H28 | Sligo | Ireland |
| H29 | Leitrim | Ireland |
| H30 | Cavan | Ireland |
| H31 | Louth | Ireland |
| H32 | Monaghan | Ireland |
| H33 | Fermanagh | Northern Ireland |
| H34 | East Donegal | Ireland |
| H35 | West Donegal | Ireland |
| H36 | Tyrone | Northern Ireland |
| H37 | Armargh | Northern Ireland |
| H38 | Down | Northern Ireland |
| H39 | Antrim | Northern Ireland |
| H40 | Londonderry | Northern Ireland |
One minor drawback of using the Vice county system is that in some cases, as a result of changes to administrative boundaries, vice counties are spread over two or more separate administrative regions.
References and further Information
NBN Watsonian Vice County information and boundary dataset downloads. (http://www.nbn.org.uk/SpecialPages/WVCB-Download.aspx).
Wikipedia: Vice-county (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice-county).