For information on the fictional Shire of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, see Shire (Middle-earth) A shire is an administrative area of Great Britain. The first shires were created by the Anglo-Saxons in what is now England and south eastern Scotland. Shires were controlled by a royal official known as a "shire reeve" or sheriff. In Australia, a shire is a type of Local Government Area. See that article for a list of Australian shires.
In Great Britain, the term 'shire county' is used to refer to non-metropolitan counties.
It can also be used in a narrower sense, referring only to traditional counties ending in 'shire'. These counties are typically (though not always) named after their county town.
Bedfordshire, Berkshire, BuckinghamshireBuckinghamshire (abbreviated Bucks is a county in south central England. The county town is Aylesbury. Buckinghamshire is divided into four districts: Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, South Bucks and Wycombe. The ceremonial county (which is based on the post- 19, CambridgeshireCambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. The county town is Cambr, CheshireThis article is about the English county. For other uses see Cheshire (disambiguation Cheshire (or archaically the County of Chester is a palatine county in North West England. Its county town is the city of Chester. It borders the ceremonial counties of, DerbyshireDerbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, which boasts some of England's most attractive hill and mountain scenery. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps wit, GloucestershireGloucestershire is a ceremonial and administrative county in southwest England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire of the Forest of Dean. The county town is Gloucester, and, HampshireHampshire is a county on the south coast of England. The 2001 census gave the population of the administrative county as 1. 24 million; the population including Portsmouth and Southampton was around 1. It borders on Dorset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Surrey an, HerefordshireHerefordshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders the counties of Shropshire in the north, Worcestershire in the east, Gloucestershire in the south east and the Welsh preserved county counties of Gwent in the south west and Powy, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire.
Of these, all but Huntingdonshire and Yorkshire are still administrative counties. Huntingdonshire is now administered as a district of Cambridgeshire, and Yorkshire is split between East North, South, and West Yorkshire.
The counties of Devon, Dorset, Rutland and Somerset were occasionally referred to with the "shire" suffix. This usage is now archaic.
