I need a list of English county towns. Each county in England has a
nominated county town (for example, in Buckinghamshire it is
Aylesbury, NOT Buckingham) - I need to know the county town for each
county.

---

Request for Question Clarification by digsalot-ga on 09 Oct 2002 10:07 PDT

There are two disignations of county towns in England.  There are the
old traditional market towns which at one time were often called
"county towns" and there are the current centers of government,
similar to American "county seats."  Which are you looking for?  They
are not necessarily the same.

Hi wanderer:

Thanks for the interesting question. 

The best list of English "county towns" I was able to find was at: 

Combs-Coombs &c. of England
http://www.combs-families.org/combs/records/england/

If you scroll down about halfway, you'll see the list. 

As you've demonstrated in your question, the name of the county town
in counties that end in "shire" is not always the *county name -
"shire"*. An interesting discussion of this phenomenon can be found
at:

Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-17655,00.html

I hope this has been of help to you. 

websearcher-ga

Search Strategy: 

"county towns" england aylesbury
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22county+towns%22+england+aylesbury

Thanks websearcher. For two dollars I am very happy with this answer.
The second like was certainly above and beyond the call of duty.