Historically, a county was an area of land which was under the jurisdiction of a count or, in England, an earl by reason of that offcie (although the original English earldoms covered larger areas). It is believed that England's division into counties originated in the Saxon period for the purpose of raising taxes and under the pressure of Danish raids as a unit for the raising of military levies to counter the threat. They had certainly become firmly established before the Norman conquest of 1066.
More recently the county has become a geographical unit of administration, intermediate between the state or region and the more local district, municipality, town or parish.
County Councils govern the counties and are resposible for startegic planning within their borders, roads, record keeping, education and administering elections. Some municipalities such as Bournemouth, Bristol, Poole, Swindon and Weymouth have been elevated to the status of county boroughs with the same status as a county, removing them administratively from the geographical counties they are in.
There can be considerable confusion with regard to counties. They can represent a traditional geographic area and their boundaries can have changed several times, as during the Local Government Reorganisation of 1974. The counties used for postal deliveries and postal codes also frequently do not coincide with the geographical or administrative counties. For purposes such as recording the occurence of species, the old traditional counties are used to make it easier to record population trends, etc.
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