Staffordshire

Staffordshire (/ˈstæfədʃɪər/ or /ˈstæfədʃə/; abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands of England. The Cannock Chase AONB is situated within the county and also parts of the National Forest, as well as areas of the Peak District national park. It adjoins Cheshire to the north west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the south east, West Midlands and Worcestershire to the south and Shropshire to the west.

The largest city in Staffordshire is Stoke-on-Trent, which is administered separately from the rest of the county as an independent unitary authority. Lichfield also has city status, although this is a considerably smaller cathedral city. Major towns include Stafford (the county town), Burton upon Trent, Cannock, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Leek and Tamworth.

Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich and Smethwick were historic Staffordshire towns until local government reorganisation created the West Midlands county in 1974.

Apart from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire is divided into the districts of Cannock Chase, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme, South Staffordshire, Stafford, Staffordshire Moorlands, and Tamworth.

Staffordshire (UK Parliament constituency)

Staffordshire was a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Members of Parliament until 1832.

History

Boundaries and franchise

The constituency, which first returned members to Parliament in 1290, consisted of the historic county of Staffordshire, excluding the city of Lichfield which had the status of a county in itself after 1556. (Although Staffordshire also contained the boroughs of Stafford and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and part of the borough of Tamworth, each of which elected two MPs in its own right for part of the period when Staffordshire was a constituency, these were not excluded from the county constituency, and owning property within the borough could confer a vote at the county election. This was not the case, though, for Lichfield.)

As in other county constituencies the franchise between 1430 and 1832 was defined by the Forty Shilling Freeholder Act, which gave the right to vote to every man who possessed freehold property within the county valued at £2 or more per year for the purposes of land tax; it was not necessary for the freeholder to occupy his land, nor even in later years to be resident in the county at all.