From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Middlesex is an area in England, mostly covered by Greater London. It is one of the 39 historical counties of England. It includes the City of London, which was self-governing from the thirteenth century. London's northwestern suburbs steadily covered large parts of Middlesex, especially following the coming of the railways.
The administrative and historic boundaries around Middlesex diverged very early on, with the recognition of the City of London as an independent county borough.
In 1888 much of the area became part of the County of London - the present-day boroughs of Camden, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Islington, Tower Hamlets and Westminster were removed.
In 1965, nearly all the remainder of Middlesex was subsumed by the new Greater London except the parish of South Mimms, which was ceded to Hertfordshire, and the district of Spelthorne, which were ceded to Surrey. The greater part went to form the new London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon, and Hounslow.
Middlesex is still used as a placename, and exists in the name of such organisations as the Middlesex County Cricket Club or Middlesex University. Royal Mail guidelines now leave the use on letters of the historic county, administrative county, or no county at all up to the personal preference of the addresser, and Middlesex is consequently commonly found on addresses outside the London postal districts (and sometimes, even within). From an organisational point of view the Royal Mail does however recognise the existance of an area called Middlesex as one of the Postal counties of England but confusingly it is not identical to the historic county boundaries - not only have large sections formed part of the London postal district but elsewhere the borders occassionally follow a different couse, such as the village of Denham which is in both the traditional and administrative county of Buckinghamshire but in the postal county of Middlesex.
In the area around Richmond upon Thames and Twickenham, one bank of the River Thames is often referred to as the "Middlesex Bank" , with "Surrey Bank" for the opposite side of the river - this identification is especially useful where the river flows in a north-westerly direction thus making the terms "north bank" and "south bank" somewhat confusing.
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