A tour round the vice-counties of Suffolk

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A TOUR ROUND THE VICE-COUNTIES OF SUFFOLK H . MENDEL

Readers expecting a guide to the more exciting night life to be had in Suffolk will be sorely disappointed! The object of this paper is to define the limits of the area we know as 'Suffolk', for recording purposes - the area recognised by the Suffolk Biological Records Centre. Distributional work on Britain's flora and fauna has traditionally been by county, and generations of naturalists have taken great pride in recording their area. It is on this tradition that the Suffolk Naturalists' Society was founded, and recording the changing status of the county's animal and plant species remains a primary object. This is all very well, but what do we do if the politicians change the boundaries of our area of study? It has been known for naturalists to spend months making corresponding amendments to their county's lists. Hopefully most of us have better things to do. What are the alternatives? We can throw out the county system all together and use an arbitrary grid, such as the National Grid, for recording purposes. This works well, and it has now become usual to record by grid Square rather than by parish, within the county area. However, perhaps because of the long history of biological recording, naturalists tend to be loyal to their counties rather than to grid squares. It has to be admitted that the 'Suffolk Naturalists' Society' somehow has a better ring to it than say the 'TL/TM Naturalists' Society'. County boundaries have the advantage of following discernible landscape features and so can easily be identified in the field, but must be fixed if they are to be of any use for recording purposes. Fortunately they have been fixed and the fixed areas are known as the vice-counties. Hewett Cottrell Watson (1804-1881) was the originator of the vice-county system which may be said to date from 1852 (Dandy, 1969). The boundaries adopted were essentially the administrative boundaries of the day, except that the larger counties were sub-divided. Differences of opinion as to the precise line of boundaries were settled by the sub-committee on maps and censuses, set up by the Systematics Association in 1947-8. The agreed boundaries were marked on a set of one-inch Ordnance Survey maps deposited at the British Museum (Natural History) and these maps are still available for study. How do the Watsonian Vice-countries differ from today's administrative county of Suffolk, as marked on the 1:50000 Ordnance Survey 'Landranger' Series (1980-81) of maps? Fortunately not too much. Starting at the south-east 'corner' of Suffolk the vice-county boundary (v.-c.b.) follows the centre of the deep water Channel from the sea into the estuary of the River Stour (Fig. 1). The administrative boundary (a.b.) follows the low water mark, and the two coincide at TM 213327, following the same course along the Stour as far as Sudbury.

Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 20


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