Cities

Introduction

This blog started out as an exploration of walking in the country, as you might expect, but I gradually became aware that this was too narrow and began to extend my postings to cover walks in towns and cities. I apply the same "voyage of discovery" philosophy to both, so why not include urban walks as well? I started applying the generic label (key word) "city" to all such walks, but I came to the conclusion that it would be more interesting, at least in England, to apply "city" more rigorously - only to those settlements which are entitled to call themselves cities.

This opens up the obvious definitional question, and this is addressed below. But it also offered an interesting project - to walk them all. Later on this page there is a list of all 55 English cities with links to the walks I have so far done.  I have done some sort of walk, sometimes more than one, in almost three-quarters of them, especially of course those in the south where I live.

What is a city?

Generally of course the term "city" describes a large urban settlement, but the precise definition is often elusive. In England there is a widespread belief that having an Anglican cathedral is a requirement, but this is simply wrong.  Fourteen cities do not have an Anglican cathedral - they are listed at the bottom of this page. Conversely, six cathedrals are not the main church of a city (Blackburn, Guildford, Southwark, Southwell, St Edmundsbury [or Bury St Edmunds as it is normally known] and St George's Chapel, Windsor). This information is from the website of The Association of English Cathedrals.

It seems that there are three bases upon which current English cities are so called:

1 They have been known as cities since time immemorial.
2 The establishment of an Anglican cathedral (e.g Ripon in 1836 or Truro in 1877).
3 The title was awarded by Letters Patent from the monarch.

Cities under the third category have recent times been the result of competitions: Millenium (Brighton and Hove, Wolverhampton); Silver Jubilee 2002 (Preston); Golden Jubilee 2012 (Chelmsford) and the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in 2022. Additionally, Southend-on-Sea was given City status in the light of the murder of Sir David Amess, also in 2022

One especially salutary tale concerns Rochester (courtesy of the UK Cities website): Rochester had held city status since 1211, but ceased to officially be a city because of an administrative oversight. The former Rochester-upon-Medway City Council neglected to appoint ceremonial Charter Trustees when Medway became a unitary authority in 1998. Unfamiliar with the archaic rules governing city status, they did not realize that Charter Trustees would be needed to protect the city's status. Consequently Rochester was removed from the Lord Chancellor's official list of UK cities.

List of English cities (55 in all)
Total now walked: 42

Bath
Birmingham
Bradford
Brighton
Bristol
Cambridge
Canterbury
Carlisle
Chelmsford
Chester
Chichester 

Colchester
Coventry
Derby

Doncaster
Durham
Ely
Exeter
Gloucester
Hereford
(Kingston upon) Hull
Lancaster
Leeds
Leicester
Lichfield
Lincoln
Liverpool
London: City of London
London: City of Westminster
Manchester

Milton Keynes
Newcastle upon Tyne
Norwich
Nottingham
Oxford
Peterborough
Plymouth
Portsmouth
Preston
Ripon
Salford
Salisbury
Sheffield
Southampton 

Southend
St Albans
Stoke-on-Trent
Sunderland
Truro
Wakefield
Wells
Winchester
Wolverhampton
Worcester
York

It is widely believed that a city must have an Anglican cathedral, but this is not the case. The cities which do not are: Bath, Brighton, Cambridge, Colchester, Doncaster, Hull, Lancaster, Leeds, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Plymouth, Preston, Salford, Southampton, Southend, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton.