PhDThis thesis describes the creation and possible uses of a Geographical Information
System that contains the changing boundaries of the major administrative units of
England and Wales from 1840 to 1974. For over 150 years the census, the General
Register Office, and others have used these units to publish a wealth of data
concerning the population of the country. The key issue addressed by the thesis is that
changes in the administrative geography have hampered much research on long-term
change in society that could have been done using these sources. The goal of the
thesis is the creation of framework to allow the analysis of long-term socio-economic
change that makes maximum use of the available data.
This involves not only making use of the data's attribute (statistical) component,
but also their spatial and temporal components. In order to do this, the thesis provides
solutions to two key problems: the first is how to build a GIS containing
administrative units that incorporates an accurate record of their changing boundaries
and can be linked to statistical data in a flexible manner. The second is how to remove
the impact of boundary changes when comparing datasets published at different dates.
This is done by devising a methodology for interpolating data from the administrative
units they were published using, onto a single target geography. An evaluation of the
accuracy of this interpolation is performed and examples are given of how this type of
research could be conducted. Taken together, these will release information locked up
within historical socio-economic statistics by allowing space to be explicitly
incorporated into any explorations of the data. This, in turn, allows research to explore
the past with increased levels of both spatial and attribute data for longer time periods
