* Finding the County for a list of Towns

[peterbel]

I have an Excel research spreadsheet which is 15000 lines long and has a column that lists the Town associated with that individual. I want to process them to also have the County in the adjacent column so I can calculate the number of lines (individuals) that were recorded in that County.
Is there slick way to do this? Thanks.

[tatewise]

A slight complication is that a significant number of Towns have changed their County over the centuries.
So what date in time do you want the relationship to apply?

[Gowermick]

Adding to what Mike said, it is also complicated by towns in different counties having the same name.
E.g. Loughton, a town in Essex and also in Buckinghamshire.
Me thinks this could be a long slog

[peterbel]

Thanks both.
Yes, I had considered those points but thought that I could deal with exceptions manually, as it would be, hopefully, a much shorter list.
There are dates in the rows which would make it possible to choose the right County list if, there were documented changes over time, but adding that filtering would make it an even more complicated task. I have searched the web for a free UK Town County database but without success.

[Gowermick]

Early in my research, i bought an old Bartholomews ‘Gazeteer of Great Britain’ from a second hand bookshop, and found it invaluable and often refer to it.

The other book I found very useful was Phillimores ‘Atlas and Index of Parish Registers’, this was bought new and cost about £50, expensive but a mine of useful information, as it also gives details of Registration Districts, an indication of what registers are available and where they’re held. It also list all the large towns in each county, and where they can be located in the enclosed maps. Both well worth looking out for.

[TimTreeby]

Thanks both.
Yes, I had considered those points but thought that I could deal with exceptions manually, as it would be, hopefully, a much shorter list.
There are dates in the rows which would make it possible to choose the right County list if, there were documented changes over time, but adding that filtering would make it an even more complicated task. I have searched the web for a free UK Town County database but without success.

Try the Gazetteer of British Place Names. They do have a downloadable version. https://gazetteer.org.uk/index

[peterbel]

Thanks Tim et al,
I have downloaded Gazetteer csv file and had a quick look at its content, looks like just what I was searching for.
Thanks again. I will try my hand at writing some Excel functions to extract the County for each of my Towns.
Should keep me busy until 2024 !

[victor]

When it comes to Yorkshire always use East, WEst or North Yorkshire but now there is South Yorkshire. There are similar place names in different partsa of the county like Hessle (near Hull in East Yorkshire and Hessle (near Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Also Scalby (near Scarbaorough) in North Yorkshire and Scalby (near North Ferriby) in East Yorkshire.
Also with the county name changes in 1974 do you use the old name for when an ancestor was born or lived or change to the new one. An example is Sheffield, originally West Yorkshire now South Yorkshie.
I prefer to stick to the old county boundaries as they were the originanal ones. The new boundaries are best described as administration counties