These are digital boundaries for the system of districts essentially created by the 1894 Local Government Act and continuing to exist until 1974. England and Wales were divided into County Boroughs, Municipal Boroughs, Urban Districts and Rural Districts. These generally functioned as sub-divisions of Administrative Counties with powers varying according to status, but County Boroughs were large cities with full independence from their County. The County of London was divided into Metropolitan Boroughs, plus the City of London which had the unique status of County Corporate. This file represents the system as it was used to report the 1961 Census of Population. To distinguish between identical place names with different administrative geographies, an Administrative County Boundaries layer may be used to add County name attributes to this layer. Statistical data and other information used in “A Vision of Britain through Time” can be accessed here: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/data.This dataset is intended for researchers, students, and policy makers for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data.