Twelve parishes.
18,637 members placed and 4,912 who have not picked one yet. Every parish here is run by a member, meets somewhere real, and has a date in its diary.
The full register.
Sorted the way they opened rather than by size, because the small ones are not the failures.
Every parish, with the detail.
| Parish | Ground it covers | Members | Warden |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Cotswolds | Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, west Warwickshire and the north Wiltshire edge | 4,182 | Eleven acres and forty ewes near Enstone. Warden since the parish opened. |
| The Dales | The Yorkshire Dales — Wharfedale, Swaledale, Wensleydale and Ribblesdale | 1,914 | Fencing contractor out of Kettlewell. Took the wardenship because nobody else put their hand up. |
| The Fens | Cambridgeshire, south Lincolnshire and west Norfolk — the black soil, roughly | 1,203 | Agronomist working out of March. Joined to argue about soil and has not stopped. |
| The Borders | Northumberland, north Cumbria and the country either side of the line | 869 | Hill farm above Bellingham. Drives furthest to his own meets and has never mentioned it. |
| The Weald | Kent, East and West Sussex and the Surrey edge of the ridge | 2,640 | Third-generation hop grower. Runs the parish the way she runs a hop yard, which is briskly. |
| The Marches | Shropshire, Herefordshire and the border country west of the Severn | 1,046 | Beef and sheep in the Clun valley. Keeps minutes, which no other warden does. |
| The Moors | The North York Moors, the Cleveland Hills and the coast down to Whitby | 1,377 | Runs a farm shop at Kirkbymoorside. Understands queues, footfall and disappointment. |
| The Broads | The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads and the coast from Cromer round to Southwold | 741 | Reed cutter and marshman. Has been doing a job most people assume ended in 1930. |
| The Levels | The Somerset Levels, the Mendip fringe and the moor from Glastonbury to Bridgwater | 934 | Cider orchard of forty-one trees, all of which she can name. Chairs a meet with a firm hand. |
| The Wolds | The Lincolnshire Wolds and the East Riding — Louth across to Driffield | 688 | Six hundred arable acres, does his own agronomy, and says so with some pride. |
| The Downs | The North Wessex Downs, the South Downs and the chalk from Marlborough to Lewes | 1,588 | Grazes chalk grassland for a wildlife trust. Owns better boots than anybody else on the register. |
| The Peak | Derbyshire, the Staffordshire Moorlands and the Cheshire edge | 1,455 | Drystone waller out of Bakewell. Has taught more members to wall than anybody else on the register. |
How the boundaries got drawn.
Badly, at first. The initial set was six regions cut along government office boundaries, which is how you end up with a parish containing both the Yorkshire Dales and Sheffield, and members of it quite reasonably asking what they were supposed to have in common.
The current twelve were proposed by members over about four months. They follow landscapes: chalk, peat, limestone, gritstone, marsh, moor. The Fens crosses three counties and the Marches crosses a national border, and both of those are correct.
Four regions still have no parish, because none has yet cleared 250 members with a warden willing to stand. They are named on Starting a Parish, along with the four proposals that were declined.
The register in four numbers.
Not in one yet?
Placement is by postcode, it takes one tap, and it costs nothing at any tier.
