Today the Irish National Archives has made available the records from the first census conducted by the Irish Free State in 1926, now that it is its 100th anniversary. I've already spent several hours down this fascinating rabbit hole. nationalarchives.ie

I've had a few queries recently via the website which could be answered easily by looking at the web page for the the relevant constituency group. It appears that new users of the site had not been finding the constituency group pages. I've now changed the wording on the homepage to make it clearer.

I once nearly got arrested for trying to break out of a house.

I never knew either of them. One was a miner in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, who fought as soldier in WWI, fighting at Gallipoli and on the western front (where he was gassed). The other was a gas works manager at Youghal, Ireland.

Despite not previously being included in the name, Denton was in Manchester Gorton constituency between 1955 and 1983 and it was part of Gorton constituency between 1885 and 1918.

The Gorton & Denton by-election will be held on 26th February. The constituency was created in 2024 from parts of the former Manchester Gorton, Manchester Withington and Denton & Reddish seats. The parts coming from the first two are in the City of Manchester, while the rest are in Tameside MB.

Belatedly I have got round to listening to the first of this pair of episodes. Excellent analysis by @robertsaunders.bsky.social if you want to understand the first two General Elections covered by the parlconst website. Well worth subscribing to @ppfideas.bsky.social just to get the second episode.

The longest wait since a General Election for the definitive account (by @robfordmancs.bsky.social @timbale.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @psurridge.bsky.social) to come out, but it has finally arrived to add to the series since 1945. That said, it also has the biggest number of pages of any.

Last night's event to mark the forthcoming publication of the definitive account of the 2024 General Election, with two of the authors: @timbale.bsky.social & @psurridge.bsky.social Hopefully one can get one's hands on the actual book by Christmas.

10 factorial (10! = 10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1) is the exact number of seconds in six weeks.

Croydon West (1950-55) had been wrongly labelled as Croydon South on the constituency map for Southern England. This has now been corrected. www.parlconst.org/constituency-maps/england/1950

Bessie Braddock's statue at Liverpool Lime Street station. What you can't see from this picture is that she appears to be in conversation with Ken Dodd.

Been doing some tidying. Very pleased that I now have my collection of Boundary Commission reports arranged in chronological order. From the 1868 report for England & Wales through to the Fifth Periodical Report for Northern Ireland (2008), as well as some interim & local government reviews.

My guess was correct - the Bayeux Tapestry will be displayed in the British Museum next year. I very much doubt that if I go and see it there that I will be the only visitor, as I was in Bayeux in 2021 in the brief period that year when travel to France was allowed.

No inside knowledge, but ... President Macron arrives in the UK tomorrow for a 3-day state visit. There appears to be a gap in his itinerary on Wednesday afternoon. Very unusually the British museum is shut for the day on Wednesday. My guess is he will he will announce a loan of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Have just finished listening to this excellent 20 part series on the 1945 General Election and its consequences, by David Runciman. If you are interested in electoral history, I thoroughly recommend it. With some insightful contributions on the political aspects from @robertsaunders.bsky.social

The boundary between the West and East Divisions of Southend between 1955 and 2010 was a block further to the east in the vicinity of Roots Hall (Southend United's ground) than previously shown. This has had a small effect on the size of sub-Areas 27 & 28. www.parlconst.org/new-constitu...

In addition to the correction made recently, the 1917 Boundary Commission recommendations were not fully implemented for Forest of Dean, Gloucester and Stroud. Also, from 1918 to 1950 the area occupied by the County Mental Asylum was an exclave of Stroud constituency wholly within Gloucester.

Over the past few months the website has been regularly updated with corrections identified by a number of correspondents. I am pleased to say that the backlog of these has finally been cleared. I am sure there will be more in the future and all are listed on the website's changelog.

Catching up on some podcast listening. This episode explores whether the UN small area population estimates undercount rural areas. This data is used, although calibrated by the size of know transfers between constituencies, in the parlconst model to derive the size of historic transfers.

I don't usually post personal stuff from this account, but I thought I would share a salutary lesson for anyone who uses Microsoft Outlook for their email. A thread: ... (1/6)

A new sub-Area 18 has been added to Area Map & Table 63a to reflect that the Wilderspool area of Warrington was in Knutsford constituency from 1885 to 1918. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/north-west/63-cheshire

The parish of Seaborough was in South Somerset from 1885 to 1918 before transferring to the West Dorset constituency, where it has remained ever since. Correcting this has created a new sub-Area 17 in the Dorset Area Map & Table. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-west/52-dorset

The Rode Hill area of the village of Rode (formerly Road) was in Wiltshire until 1937 and Westbury constituency until 1950. Showing this correctly has created a new sub-Area 12 in Area Map & Table 49b. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-west/49-somerset

A number of corrections have been made to boundaries in Gloucestershire. The most significant error was previously showing the 1918-1950 boundaries as recommended by the 1917 Boundary Commission, whereas the actual implementation had Tetbury RD in Cirencester & Tewkesbury and not in Stroud.

Between 1885 and 1918 the far north-western part of Malvern was in Herefordshire (Leominster constituency). This is now reflected in a new sub-Area 9 in Area Map & Table 45b. parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/west-midlands/45-herefordshire-and-worcestershire

A northern part of Newport in Shropshire had been in Staffordshire until the 1960s (and in Stafford & Stone constituency until 1974). Correcting this has created a new sub-Area 6 in the Shropshire Area Map & Table. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/west-midlands/44-shropshire

Upper Ipsley was created as a parish in 1894, being the part of Ipsley which joined Redditch UD. However it remained part of Warwickshire for parliamentary purposes until 1918. This was previously wrong on the website, but now remedied with a new sub-Area 20 in Area Map & Table 45c.

The boundary maps on the @parlconst.bsky.social website were largely created by working backwards in time and noting changes. Problems sometimes arise when the constituent parts of constituency don't change in a review, but the boundaries of one or more of those parts has changed slightly. (1/4)

A new sub-Area 9 has been added to Area Map & Table 38d - Birmingham (South) to reflect the current couple of streets that would have been in Birmingham S constituency from 1885 - 1918 (not Worcestershire E) and then transferred to Birmingham Moseley in 1918. www.parlconst.org/new-constitu...

There were an awful lot of very minor changes to county boundaries in the early 1990s. Have just finished three days solid work trying to make sure that Derbyshire's pre-1997 boundaries are shown correctly on the parlconst.org website. (1/2)

A question for those who download boundary datasets from the website. Because of the way uMap (which hosts the zoomable maps) used to position the showing of the constituency name, the website maps (in England only) treat each detached part of a constituency as a separate feature. (1/4)

Multiple minor corrections have been made to the website maps showing the boundary between Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire before 1997, mainly relating to the boundary of Bassetlaw constituency. In most cases these changes are too small to be reflected in the in the Area Maps & Tables.

I've always been impressed by @natlibscot.bsky.social maps, but today they really excelled. I noticed a technical problem with their website this morning, so I e-mailed them. Despite being Sunday, they replied just over half an hour later to apologise and to say that it had been fixed.

The website has been updated to add a new sub-Area 33 to Area Map & Table 35a (Lincolnshire (Kesteven & Holland) and Rutland) to reflect that prior to 1918 this part of Wingland Parish was in Norfolk. www.parlconst.org/new-constitu...

Where constituency boundaries are over water (e.g. in an estuary), the maps on the website do not attempt to replicate the precise line of the boundary, as sometimes this arbitrarily changes. In a very few cases this could cause slight anomalies when an area has been reclaimed and built upon.

The 1885 - 1918 boundary of King's Lynn has been corrected in South Lynn, resulting in a slightly smaller estimate of the size of the 1885 - 1918 King's Lynn constituency. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/east-anglia/31-norfolk

There aren't Bluesky posts about very minor corrections to boundary maps that are not big enough to generate a change to the sub-Areas. However, all changes that are made are listed on the website's changelog: www.parlconst.org/information-about-the-site/changelog

Correction. In the period 1885 - 1918 the Broadwater Down area of Tunbridge Wells (sub-Area 27a) was in Rye constituency. It is sufficiently large to warrant a dotted line on the Constituency Charts from Rye to Tonbridge in 1918. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-east/28-kent-west

I am on my travels in Dundee at the moment. Glad to see the city remembers Winston Churchill as its MP. Still looking for similar memorials to Edwin Scrymgeour, Dingle Foot and Florence Horsbrugh, among others.

Another minor correction. Up until the 1990s the Baldwins Hill area of East Grinstead (new sub-Area 20) was part of Surrey, and was in either Reigate or East Surrey constituency from 1885 until 1997. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-east/26-west-sussex

A couple more corrections. The Faberstown area of Ludgershall in Wiltshire was in Hampshire until the 1990s. Correcting this creates a new sub-Area, 20b, with the same constituency history as the previous Wiltshire sub-Area 20. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-west/46-wiltshire

Minor corrections to the website continue. There was a realignment of the county boundary between Berkshire and Hampshire, in several places near Tadley, in the 1990s. The pre-1997 constituency boundaries were incorrectly shown. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-east/24-hampshire-west

Unfortunately, the index and changelog tables on the website are currently not displaying correctly in some versions of the Firefox browser. If you have this problem, please click on the link when you hover over the table to open as a spreadsheet in a new window. www.parlconst.org/information-...

To the NE of Milton Keynes the boundary with Bedfordshire follows the M1 motorway for a short way. This wasn't the case before 1997. Correcting this results in a new sub-Area 9, which was undeveloped at the time of the transfer. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-east/20-buckinghamshire

Last month the ONS released for the first time accurate boundary datasets for the wards in place at the time of the 1971 and 1981 censuses. This will help enormously, as it covers the period when it has been most difficult for the parlconst project to create constituency boundaries, because: (1/2)

Another correction. Up until 1997 a small part of the now built-up outskirts of Bishop's Stortford were outwith the town and were in Essex. Showing this correctly has resulted in a new sub-Area 65 in Area Map & Table 18b. www.parlconst.org/new-constituency-groups/south-east/18-hertfordshire

I've been a bit quiet recently, but one of my regular correspondents has sent me a list of boundary corrections, mainly affecting the 1885 boundaries. I won't report on all these here, but changes to boundary maps will be noted on the Changelog: www.parlconst.org/information-about-the-site/changelog

I have finally decided that I will no longer be posting on Twitter - so this will be only social media account for my random comments about parliamentary constituencies.

I've spotted 13 pairs of constituency names that can be so changed - but there may be more. Let me know the ones you find and I will repost the answers as I get them. But please suggest just one pair of names per person per day. Let's see how many we can get! (3/3)