Baronies of New Ingerland
A barony is a cadastral unit in New Ingerland used by both the government and the Church for a variety of administrative purposes.
History
New Ingerland's baronies owe their origins to an English geographical unit known as a hundred. From mediaeval times, the hundred was the division of a shire that was used for justice, military defence, and taxation purposes[1]. In the ecclesiastical sphere, the hundred was often coterminous with a unit known as a rural deanery, which served as a grouping of parishes within a much larger unit known as an archdeaconry. Just like the hundred, rural deaneries trace their origins to the mediaeval era, having thought to have first arisen in the 10th or 11th centuries[2].
With the formation of the New Ingerland Company in 1834, the Board of Governors commissioned their Surveyor-General, James Lang, to proceed to the archipelago and undertake a full survey so as to divide the country in to a series of counties, hundreds, and parishes for close settlement. At Port Frederick, Lang followed the orders given to him and went about surveying about a third of Brunswich Island before he was killed in December 1836. In the meantime, the Board of Governors had arrived, and commenced their settlement of New Ingerland within the lands that Lang had surveyed up to that stage. At some point in the first years of settlement, and for reasons that have never been uncovered, the term hundred fell out of use and was replaced by barony. Whilst many explanations have been given over the years, the most commonly accepted reason is that many baronial titles drew their names from the hundreds, and so at some point the titles merged.
Until the introduction of rural districts in 1907, the baronies were the only universally used geographical unit between the parish and the county. Unlike in Ingerland, where poor law unions, sanitary districts, and highway districts appeared in the nineteenth century, in New Ingerland the barony remained the only grouping of parishes within a county.
Function and purpose
Civil functions
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This article is part of the series: Statistical areas of New Ingerland |
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Statistics Agency New Ingerland Census (2015 · 2020) |
In recent times, there are only a few minor functions that the baronies perform in civil administration.
In many instances, baronies became rural districts in 1907 when the latter were established for the first time. This situation more or less endures through to the present day, although reforms to local government mean that the legal nexus between the two has long since been broken. The vast majority of the rural districts are still coterminous with a barony today, and they tend to share the same name and seat.
Baronies are also used to administer the national census and other statistical datasets, where they form the third-level statistical area (SA3). Baronies are also used to build the special statistical areas, such as the metropolitan statistical area. Outside of the census, the barony is used to produced other datasets, such as labour force data, mostly owing the barony being a semi-self-contained population centre.
Ecclesiastical functions
The primary role of the barony in modern times is within the Ingerian Church of New Ingerland, where they are known as rural deaneries or area deaneries. Deaneries exist as groupings of parishes within an archdeaconry, and is led by a senior priest known as an Area Dean. The role of an Area Dean takes in a number of functions, including:
- helping the Bishop in his episcopate and care of the deanery;
- providing a supportive and collaborative leadership for mission and ministry in the deanery;
- convening Chapter and co-chairing Deanery Synod and its work;
- being a friend to clergy and lay leaders of the parishes; and
- deputising for the archdeacon in his parish visitations.
Unofficial roles
Today, the baronies have largely fallen out of public consciousness, having been replaced as civil governing units in 1907 by rural districts.
References and notes
- ↑ Bjork, Robert E. (2010). The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199574834.
- ↑ Hey, David (2009). The Oxford Companion to Family and Local History (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199532988.