British vice-counties

Vice-county boundaries were originally defined by H.C. Watson in 1852. Many biological recording schemes still use the vice-county boundaries, which have remained unchanged and therefore provide a stable way of grouping county records, rather then the modern county boundaries, which are subject to revision. For more information see Wikipedia.

Digitised boundaries for British vice-counties are available from BRC's GitHub repository. (These include amendments and corrections from the version originally digitised by the National Biodiversity Network.)

Latest edits at 2 November 2020:

  • The islands of Sule Stack and Sule Skerry off the north coast of Scotland had been incorrectly allocated to VC110 - these have now been allocated to VC111.
  • The list of vice-county names has been rationalised to remove some typos and inconsistencies. There is no 'official' list of VC names, and all available sources differ from each other in some respects. The list now in use here is based on the most widely used variants.
No. Name

1

West Cornwall

2

East Cornwall

3

South Devon

4

North Devon

5

South Somerset

6

North Somerset

7

North Wiltshire

8

South Wiltshire

9

Dorset

10

Isle of Wight

11

South Hampshire

12

North Hampshire

13

West Sussex

14

East Sussex

15

East Kent

16

West Kent

17

Surrey

18

South Essex

19

North Essex

20

Hertfordshire

21

Middlesex

22

Berkshire

23

Oxfordshire

24

Buckinghamshire

25

East Suffolk

26

West Suffolk

27

East Norfolk

28

West Norfolk

29

Cambridgeshire

30

Bedfordshire

31

Huntingdonshire

32

Northamptonshire

33

East Gloucestershire

34

West Gloucestershire

35

Monmouthshire

36

Herefordshire

37

Worcestershire

38

Warwickshire

39

Staffordshire

40

Shropshire

41

Glamorgan

42

Breconshire

43

Radnorshire

44

Carmarthenshire

45

Pembrokeshire

46

Cardiganshire

47

Montgomeryshire

48

Merionethshire

49

Caernarvonshire

50

Denbighshire

51

Flintshire

52

Anglesey

53

South Lincolnshire

54

North Lincolnshire

55

Leicestershire

56

Nottinghamshire

57

Derbyshire

58

Cheshire

59

South Lancashire

60

West Lancashire

61

South-east Yorkshire

62

North-east Yorkshire

63

South-west Yorkshire

64

Mid-west Yorkshire

65

North-west Yorkshire

66

County Durham

67

South Northumberland

68

North Northumberland

69

Westmorland

70

Cumberland

71

Isle of Man

72

Dumfriesshire

73

Kirkcudbrightshire

74

Wigtownshire

75

Ayrshire

76

Renfrewshire

77

Lanarkshire

78

Peeblesshire

79

Selkirkshire

80

Roxburghshire

81

Berwickshire

82

East Lothian

83

Midlothian

84

West Lothian

85

Fifeshire

86

Stirlingshire

87

West Perthshire

88

Mid Perthshire

89

East Perthshire

90

Angus

91

Kincardineshire

92

South Aberdeenshire

93

North Aberdeenshire

94

Banffshire

95

Moray

96

East Inverness-shire

97

West Inverness-shire

98

Argyll

99

Dunbartonshire

100

Clyde Isles

101

Kintyre

102

South Ebudes

103

Mid Ebudes

104

North Ebudes

105

West Ross

106

East Ross

107

East Sutherland

108

West Sutherland

109

Caithness

110

Outer Hebrides

111

Orkney

112

Shetland

113

Channel Islands
British vice-counties
Image source
Based on work by BRC and NBN