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 The County of Wiltshire within England | |||||||||||||||||||
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The first-ever Elections to Wiltshire County Council were held on 23 January 1889. Sixty members were up for election, with up to twenty more voting aldermen to be appointed by the new council.
The first Chairman of the Council was John Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath, and he remained in office until his death in 1896.
The Local Government Act 1888 created County Councils throughout England and Wales, to take over various administrative functions until then carried out by the unelected Quarter Sessions. They gained some of their powers under the Act on 1 April 1889, and their full powers on 22 September 1889. These included repairing county roads and bridges; maintaining court houses, police stations, and county halls; providing an asylum for pauper lunatics and reformatory and industrial schools; and being responsible for weights and measures and the control of contagious diseases in animals. [1] The areas they covered were called administrative counties and were not in all cases identical to the traditional counties, but in Wiltshire the whole ceremonial county came under the authority of the new county council, as there were then no towns or cities in Wiltshire large enough to be treated as county boroughs.
A Committee on Areas and Boundaries for Wiltshire was established to draw up a scheme of electoral divisions. It was reported in October 1888 that this scheme was ready to be presented to the next Court of Quarter Sessions for approval. [2] Elections to the council were to be held every three years on a household franchise, with sixty seats available, including three for Salisbury and one each for Devizes, Malmesbury, and Marlborough. There were also to be up to twenty voting aldermen, chosen by the councillors, holding office for six years. [3]
The first elections to the county council were held on 23 January 1889, but only thirty-two of the seats were contested. Among those elected unopposed were the 4th Marquess of Bath, the 13th Earl of Pembroke, the 18th Earl of Suffolk, Sir Thomas Grove, 1st Baronet MP, Sir Charles Hobhouse, 4th Baronet, and Sir R. H. Pollen. [4] The contested seats were mostly fought on party lines, and sources vary on the exact numbers elected. [3] The Local Government Chronicle of 2 February 1889 reported 28 Liberals, 28 Conservatives, and four Liberal Unionists; [5] a note on the fly-leaf of the County Council Minutes says 26 Liberals, 25 Conservatives, and nine Liberal Unionists. [6] Five Labour candidates were reported to be standing as Liberals, and one, Isaac Dalley, was elected [3] in the North Western division. [7]
A first provisional meeting of the county council, before it gained its powers, was held at Devizes on 31 January 1889, with all of the members present, and Lord Bath was elected as chairman. Several voting aldermen were appointed, all from outside the elected members of the council. [8] Further meetings were held in the Council House, Salisbury, on 1 April, [9] the Town Hall, Warminster, on 1 July, [10] and the recently-built Trowbridge Town Hall, on 6 August 1889. [11]
The new county council had many of the members of the outgoing quarter sessions. The continuity was emphasized by the leadership: Lord Bath had been chairman of the Salisbury and Warminster sessions since 1880, and his vice-chairman, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, had been the second chairman of the Devizes and Marlborough quarter sessions since 1887. [3]
In Great Britain and Ireland, a county town is the most important town or city in a county. It is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county, and the place where public representatives are elected to parliament. Following the establishment of county councils in England 1889, the headquarters of the new councils were usually established in the county town of each county; however, the concept of a county town pre-dates these councils.
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to the west. The largest settlement is Swindon, and Trowbridge is the county town.
West Wiltshire was a local government district in Wiltshire, England, between 1974 and 2009, when it was superseded by Wiltshire Council.
Westbury was a parliamentary constituency in Wiltshire from 1449 to 2010. It was represented in the House of Commons of England until 1707, and then in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800, and finally in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 until 2010.
Wiltshire is a historic county located in the South West England region. Wiltshire is landlocked and is in the east of the region.
Devizes is a constituency in Wiltshire, England, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Danny Kruger, a Conservative.
The Local Government Act 1888 was an Act of Parliament which established county councils and county borough councils in England and Wales. It came into effect on 1 April 1889, except for the County of London, which came into existence on 21 March at the request of the London County Council.
Wiltshire was a constituency of the House of Commons of England from 1290 to 1707, of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Members of Parliament (MPs), elected by the bloc vote system.
Wiltshire Council, known between 1889 and 2009 as Wiltshire County Council, is the local authority which governs the non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire in South West England. Since 2009 it has been a unitary authority, having taken over district-level functions when the county's districts were abolished. The non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire is smaller than the ceremonial county of the same name, the latter additionally including Swindon. Wiltshire Council has been controlled by the Conservative Party since 2000, and has its headquarters at County Hall in Trowbridge.
Nottinghamshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Nottinghamshire in England. It consists of 66 county councillors, elected from 56 electoral divisions every four years. The most recent election was held in 2021.
The Royal Wiltshire Militia was an auxiliary regiment of the British Army from the English county of Wiltshire. From their formal organisation as Trained Bands in 1558 until their final service in the Special Reserve, the Militia regiments of the county carried out internal security and garrison duties at home and overseas in all of Britain's major wars. The Wiltshire Militia was active in suppressing Monmouth's Rebellion in 1685 and was present at the Battle of Sedgemoor. It became a battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment in 1881 and trained thousands of reservists and recruits during World War I. It maintained a shadowy existence until final disbandment in 1953.
Elections to Wiltshire County Council were held on 7 June 2001. The whole council was up for election and the Conservatives held onto control.
Elections to Wiltshire County Council were held on 1 May 1997. The whole council was up for election and the result was no overall control, with the Conservatives as the largest party.
The Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust is a charitable organisation which works to preserve the architectural heritage of Wiltshire, in the West of England.
Cumberland County Council was the county council of Cumberland in the North West of England, an elected local government body responsible for most local services in the county. It was established in 1889 as a result of the Local Government Act 1888. Carlisle was initially within its area but became a separate county borough in 1914. In 1974, both authorities were merged along with parts of others into the new Cumbria County Council. In April 2023 local government in Cumbria was reorganised into two unitary authorities, one of which is named Cumberland Council and includes most of the historic county, with the exception of Penrith and the surrounding area.
Wiltshire County Council elections were first held on 23 January 1889, with the election of the first Wiltshire County Council. Thereafter, elections were held every three years, with all members being elected on the same day. Later, the cycle was changed to one election in every four years, and the last such election was in 2005. There were also occasional by-elections, the last of which took place in February 2008.
The 2021 Wiltshire Council election took place on 6 May 2021 as part of the 2021 local elections in the United Kingdom. All 98 councillors were elected from electoral divisions which returned one councillor each by first-past-the-post voting for a four-year term of office.
Warminster Town Hall is a former municipal building in the Market Place of Warminster, Wiltshire, England. The structure, which served as the headquarters of Warminster Urban District Council, is a Grade II listed building.
