General Chat

can anyone tell me the difference between a town and city please. Thank you,Julie

Terri thanks for that my boyfriend said the same,although i said London was a city he said he was not sure so i said don't we have something called St Paul's LOL

It's a status which is granted by some sort of decree - Swansea's football team only changed name from Swansea Town to Swansea City in 1970 so I would guess the town became a city around the same town. Derby only became a city in 1977 as part of the Silver Jubilee business. I seem to think there was some sort of competition for a town to become a city as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations and Preston won it. I have now found this which tells all about it: http://www.municipalyearbook.*co.uk/index.asp?pageid=265

Brighton was changed to City status about 2 years ago when it joined councils with Hove to become larger. Now it's Brighton and Hove Council and all the house prices shot up virtually over night! Sheila

i put a thread on about that awhile ago aprently a vlliage has a idot a town has a cryor & a city has a slicker but seriously a town has to have a certain amount of people living there to be classed as a town & a city has a cathedral

Wolverhampton is classed as a city now, but not too sure if it has a Cathedral

southampton is a city but we dont have a cathedral. jenny x

maybe it's just all to do with how many people live there

I`m sure it has something to do with the population levels.

I don't think so - Wells is the smallest city in England with under 10,000. It's all a case of whether or not, at some time in history, the monarch has seen fit to grant it City status.

There is no clear definition. Leeds city has the town hall at its centre. It's like saying "how old is an adult" or is it a "tree or a shrub" Bob

I have always heard that a place is a City if it has a Cathedral in it, but I have always wondered why Southampton hasnt got one.

How very interesting! Over here you are classed as a city according to the population, and as there are a fair amount of British German and Dutch residents. We in Lagoa are now a city.....but it is still a village. No hospital, just a medical centre that keeps office hours, a little post for the cops and no police station. We have churches that date from the 1800s but no cathedral. In the 1700s there was an earthquake that swollowed up half of the Algarve and Lisbon. In some places you can still see walls. Silves the next city has a cathedral and a castle. Lindy;-)

I think the commonly held view that a city must have a cathedral is true with a few exceptions; the Queen grants city status to a town every few years I beleive - the town in which I live, is referred to as the "Borough and New City of Milton Keynes" however strictly speaking it isn't actually a city - it missed out when the last "charter" was granted, I think that was the occasion on which it was given to Brighton.

i find this very interesting,as i live just outside croydon,in surrey..its the biggest town outside of london,in the country...yet,the last charter came down against croydon...so it leaves it open to speculation. bryan.

david you can send one to southampton then but I dont know where we will put it, maybe in the middle of southampton common lol. jenny x

Liverpool's two cathedrals are C of E and Roman Catholic. I remember once having fun trying to explain to a tourist the difference between Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. According to Collins English Dictionary, Millennium edition: city - (in Britain) a large town that has received this title from the Crown: usually the seat of a bishop. town - a densely populated urban area, typically smaller than a city and larger than a village, having some local powers of government and a fixed boundary. village - a small group of houses in a country area, larger than a hamlet hamlet - (Britain) a village without its own church nell

Thank you all for youe replies Julie