ENGLAND 



2907 



ENGLAND 



ENGLAND: ITS TOPOGRAPHY, HISTORY, ETC. 



A. D. INNES, Author of A History of England. B. C. WALLIS, and A. W. HOLLAND 



A description of England from the topographical, the geological, and the climatic point of view, is followed 

 by some account of its industries and communications. Then come sections dealing with its government and 

 its history, the latter being taken down to 1707, from which date it is continued under the heading of United 

 Kingdom. In addition, some thousands of articles describe the counties and towns, rivers and mountains 

 of England, deal with the lives of kings and statesmen, with wars, battles, and political and social movements. 

 The government is described in detail in a series of articles from Parish to Parliament 



England, originally Angleland or 

 the land of the Angles, covers the 

 larger and southern part of the 

 island of Great Britain, excepting 

 only that western part of it known 

 as Wales. It is bounded by Scot- 

 land on the N. and Wales on part of 

 the W. ; elsewhere its borders are the 

 North Sea on the E., the English 

 Channel on the S., and the Atlantic 

 Ocean and the Irish Sea on the W. 



The area of England is 50,874 

 sq. m., being nearly two-thirds of 

 Great Britain. It measures 430 m. 

 in extreme length, from the Lizard 

 to Berwic u -on-Tweed, and 370 m. in 

 extreme width, from Land's End to 

 Lowestoft. In shape it is an irre- 

 gular triangle. The coast, especially 

 on the W.j is broken with numerous 

 openings, making a total length 

 of 1,800 m. The W. coast is 

 high and rocky, bold cliffs and 

 buttresses of hard rock standing 

 out to sea. On it are three large 

 openings Sol way Firth, More- 

 cambe Bay, and the Bristol Chan- 

 nel, as well as the mouths of the 

 Ribble, the Mersey, and the Dee, 

 which, however, is Welsh on one 

 side. Between England and Wales 

 there is only a county boundary. 

 ^ Coast-line and Harbours 



The chief headlands are St. Bees 

 Head, Hartland Point, and Land's 

 End. The S. coast combines 

 the peculiarities of both the E. 

 and W. coasts, the two sections 

 being divided by the Isle of Wight. 

 East of it is a coast-line with a low, 

 clay shore, broken here and there 

 by chalk cliffs ; W. of it the coast 

 is high and bold. Its chief openings 

 are harbours, several of which are 

 unusually good. They include 

 Portsmouth Harbour, Southampton 

 Water, Weymouth Bay, Tor Bay, 

 Plymouth Sound, Falmouth Har- 

 bour, and Mount's Bay. The chief 

 headlands are the Lizard, Start 

 Point, Portland Bill, St. Alban's 

 Head, Selsey BUI, Beachy Head, 

 Dungeness, and the S. Foreland. 



The E. coast is regular in out- 

 line, broken only by the estuaries 

 of rivers. In places it is high and 

 rocky, lut much of it is low and 

 sandy, and along parts of it the 

 sea is encroaching. The princi- 

 pal river mouths are those of the 

 Tyne, the Tees, and the Humber, 

 the Wash, and the Thames. The 

 chief headlands are Flamborough 

 Head, Spurn Head, Lowestoft Ness, 

 the Naze, and the North Foreland. 



The N. boundary is formed by the 

 course of the Tweed, the line of the 

 Cheviots, and three streams Kers- 

 hope Burn, Liddel Water, and the 

 Sark falling into the Solway. Its 

 length is just under 100 m. 



There are but few islands off the 

 coast of England. The Isle of Man 

 and the Isle of Wight are the largest, 

 but the former is not, strictly 

 speaking, part of England, having 

 its own laws and government. Off 

 Northumberland are the Fame 

 Islands, Lindisfarne or Holy Island, 

 and Coquet Island, but off the E. 

 coast there is nothing else until 

 Foulness Island,off Essex,is reached. 

 Thanet and Sheppey cannot pro- 

 perly be called islands. Off the 

 W. coast are Walney Island, op- 

 posite Barrow, and Lundy Island 

 in the Bristol Channel. Off Corn- 

 wall is a group, the Scilly Islands. 

 The County Divisions 



England is divided into forty 

 counties, varying greatly in 

 size. Some of them are further 

 divided for local government and 

 other purposes, while in the three 

 ridings Yorkshire has a more his- 

 toric division. The counties and 

 their acreage, which includes the 

 sheets of water therein, are as 

 follows. The number after each 

 indicates its relative position as re- 

 gards size. 



County 

 Bedford (37) 

 Berkshire (32) 

 Buckingham (30) 

 Cambridge (25) 

 Cheshire (19) 

 Cornwall (14) 

 Cumberland (11) 

 Derby (20) 

 Devon (3) 

 Dorset (23) 

 Durham (21) 

 Essex (9) 

 Gloucester (17) 

 Hampshire (7) 

 Hereford (27) 

 Hertford (35) 

 Huntingdon (38) 

 Kent (10) 

 Lancashire (6) 

 Leicester (28) 

 Lincoln (2) . . 

 Middlesex (39) 

 Monmouth (36) 

 Norfolk (4) . . 

 Northampton (22 

 Northumberland 5) 

 Nottingham (26) 

 Oxford (31) 

 Rutland (40) 

 Shropshire (16 

 Somerset (8) 

 Stafford (18) 

 Suffolk (12) 

 Surrey (33) 

 Sussex (13) 

 Warwick (24) 



Area in Acres. 

 302,942 

 463,834 

 479,360 

 553,241 

 656,370 

 868,167 

 973,086 

 650,369 



1,671,364 

 625,612 

 649,244 

 979,532 

 805,794 



1,053,092 

 538,924 

 404,523 

 233,985 

 975,966 



1,061,615 

 532,779 



1,705,293 

 148,701 

 349,552 



1,315,064 

 638,612 



1,291,515 

 540,123 

 479,220 

 97,273 

 861,800 



1,032,490 

 741,318 

 948,269 

 461,829 

 932,409 

 605,275 



Westmorland (29) 

 Wiltshire (15) 

 Worcester (34) .. 

 Yorkshire (1) E.R. 



N.R. 



W.R. 



505,330 



864,101 



458,352 



750,214 



1,362,285 



1,773,529 



This table does not include the 

 county of London, formed in 1888 

 out of the counties of Middlesex, 

 Surrey, and Kent. Its area is 

 74,816 acres. 



POPULATION. The population of 

 England, according to the census 

 of 1921, was 35,678,530. Of 

 these, 16,984,087 were males 

 and 18,694,443 were females. 

 The increase since the 1871 census, 

 according to the decennial census 

 figures, was as follows : 



Year 

 1871 

 1881 

 1891 

 1901 

 1911 



Population 

 21,495,131 

 24,613,926 

 27,489,228 

 30.813,043 

 34,045,290 



Taking England and Wales to- 

 gether, the average pop. per sq. m. 

 had grown from 389 in 1871 to 

 618 in 1911. The population of 

 England and Wales, when the first 

 census was taken in 1801, was 

 8,892,536, or 152 to the sq. m. ' 



In the years between 1911 and 

 1921 there were great movements 

 of population, this being due to the 

 general upheaval caused by the 

 Great War. A full revelation of the 

 extent and nature of these changes 

 can only be seen when the census 

 figures for 1921 are complete. 



Each year the registrar-general, 

 with the various vital statistics 

 before him, makes an estimate of 

 the population of the country. He 

 includes Wales with England. For 

 the years 1914-19 they include the 

 civilian population only. They are 

 as follows, the date being June 30 

 each year : 



Year Population 



1914 . .. . 36,960,684 



1915 

 1916 

 1917 

 1918 

 1919 



35,358,896 

 34,500,000 

 33,711,000 

 33,474.700 

 35,993,000 



In 1915, and still more in 1916, 

 1917, and 1918, the military popu- 

 lation was large, something like 

 4,000,000 at one time, although 

 these did not all come from Eng- 

 land. It was considerable in 1919, 

 when the population was returned 

 at just about a million below the 

 1914 figure. It seems, therefore, 

 fair to assume, on the basis of the 

 registrar-general's figures, that the 



