Random City Generator UK

How this random UK city generator works

Press Generate and you get a British place. Turn up the Number box for several at once, no repeats. Copy takes them.

Abingdon. Accrington. Acle. Acton. Adlington. Alcester. Aldeburgh. Alnwick.

Now pick one and ask yourself whether it is a city. You cannot answer, and neither can anybody else, because in Britain the question has nothing to do with the place.

A British city is a title, not a size

In most countries a city is a kind of settlement, or a kind of local authority, or a place above some population threshold.

In the United Kingdom, a city is a place the monarch has said is a city.

The status is conferred by letters patent, a document issued by the sovereign on the advice of ministers. It carries no extra powers, no funding, no additional tier of government, and no legal privileges whatsoever. It entitles a place to call itself a city. That is the whole of it.

There are seventy-six of them. Fifty-five in England, eight in Scotland, seven in Wales, six in Northern Ireland.

There is no population test. There is no cathedral test either, although there used to be an association. In the 1540s Henry VIII founded six new dioceses and granted the six towns that housed them city status by letters patent, and until 1889 in England and Wales the title effectively followed the cathedral. Then Birmingham became the first town without one to be made a city, and the connection broke.

Today the status is handed out sparingly, usually in competitions tied to a royal occasion. Seventeen of the seventy-six have been created since 2000. The Platinum Jubilee round in 2022 produced eight new cities: Bangor, Colchester, Doncaster, Dunfermline, Milton Keynes and Wrexham, plus Douglas in the Isle of Man and Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Southend-on-Sea had been granted the status a few months earlier, by letters patent dated 26 January 2022, in memory of its murdered MP.

There is no mechanism for a town to simply apply. It has to wait for a competition.

Rochester stopped being a city and nobody noticed for four years

Because city status attaches to a legal body rather than to a place, it can be lost when the body is abolished.

When a council holding city status is dissolved in a local government reorganisation, the status has to be reconfirmed by fresh letters patent, or it lapses. York and Hereford have both been reconfirmed twice. Hereford briefly lost the status in April 2000 and had it restored on 9 October.

Rochester was not so lucky. Its council was abolished in 1998, no reconfirmation was sought, and the city status quietly ceased to exist. Medway Council did not discover that Rochester was no longer on the government's list of cities until 2002. A bid to recover it in the 2012 Diamond Jubilee round failed.

Rochester has a cathedral and a castle and had been a city since time immemorial. It is not a city now, because a piece of paperwork was not filed.

The same thing happened to St David's in 1886 and to Armagh in 1840. Both had been cities since time immemorial. Both had to be granted the status again by letters patent, in 1994.

The smallest city, and the largest town

St Davids, in Pembrokeshire, has fewer than two thousand residents. It is a city.

Reading is one of the largest towns in the country, bigger and richer than a good many official cities. It is a town. It has bid for city status repeatedly, including in the 2022 round, and been refused every time. So have Luton and Northampton.

In Greater London, only two local authorities hold city status: the City of London and the City of Westminster. The Greater London Authority does not have it. Croydon has applied and been turned down. The government has generally declined to grant it to any other London borough, on the grounds that doing so would dilute the two that have it.

So "London is a city" is true only in the sense that a square mile in the middle of it is one.

The endings are a map of who arrived when

Read down the names and the history of the island falls out of them.

chester, caster and cester are the same ending in three spellings, and they mark a Roman fort. Wherever you find one, a legion once camped.

ton, ham, ford, bury, field and worth are Old English, and they are everywhere, because the people who spoke it were.

by, thorpe, toft and beck are Old Norse, and they thicken as you move north and east into what was the Danelaw. Run your finger up the map from Nottingham to York and watch them arrive.

None of this was planned. Nobody decided that a Roman fort should be marked for two thousand years by a syllable. Every conqueror simply named what they found in the language they had, and the names outlived them all.

Ways people actually use this

• English place names for fiction. Excellent, and real, which is a different quality from invented.
• Quizzes. Show a place and ask whether it is a city. The answer is almost never what people expect.
• Teaching. The clearest demonstration anywhere that a word can be a legal title rather than a description.
• Address test data. Real English place names, correctly spelled.
• Settling arguments. No, Reading is not a city. Yes, St Davids is.

Getting more out of the filters

• Entries are bare names, so Contains is a pure substring search. Type ford, bury, ton, ham or chester and English settlement history falls out.
• chester and caster are the same ending in two spellings, and they cluster where the Romans built. Try both.
• Try by, thorpe and wick as well. Each ending clusters in a different part of the country, and the clusters are a map of who arrived when.
• Starts with and Ends with compare a single character. Give them one letter.

Questions people ask

How many cities are there in the UK?

Seventy-six: 55 in England, eight in Scotland, seven in Wales and six in Northern Ireland. The figure has been stable since the Platinum Jubilee grants in 2022.

What makes a place a city in the UK?

A grant of city status by the monarch, made by letters patent on ministerial advice. It is not based on population, a cathedral, a university, or the type of council. It confers no powers or funding.

Do you need a cathedral to be a city?

No. The association is historical. Until 1889 in England and Wales the title effectively followed the presence of a diocesan cathedral. Birmingham was the first town without one to be made a city, in 1889.

Can a place lose city status?

Yes. It attaches to a legal body, and if that body is abolished without the status being reconfirmed by fresh letters patent, it lapses. Rochester lost its status in 1998 and the council only realised in 2002.

What is the smallest city in the UK?

St Davids in Pembrokeshire, with fewer than two thousand residents. Meanwhile Reading, many times its size, remains a town.

References

1. What makes a city? House of Commons Library
2. City status in the United Kingdom
3. List of cities in the United Kingdom