County town

A county town is a county's current or former administrative centre in the United Kingdom, Ireland, or Jamaica. County towns are usually the location of administrative or judicial functions, or established over time as the de facto main town of a county. The concept of a county town eventually became detached from its original meaning of where the county administration or county hall is based. In fact, many county towns are no longer part of "their" administrative county. For example, Nottingham is administered by a unitary authority entirely separate from the rest of Nottinghamshire. Many county towns are classified as cities, but all are referred to as county towns regardless of whether city status is held or not.

UK county towns pre 19th-century reforms

Historic counties of England

This list shows county towns prior to the reforms of 1889.

Little Willie

Little Willie was a prototype in the development of the British Mark I tank. Constructed in the autumn of 1915 at the behest of the Landships Committee, it was the first completed tank prototype in history. Little Willie is the oldest surviving individual tank, preserved as one of the most famous pieces in the collection of The Tank Museum, Bovington, England.

Number 1 Lincoln Machine

Work on Little Willie's predecessor was begun in July 1915 by the Landships Committee to meet Great Britain's requirement in World War I for an armoured combat vehicle able to cross a 5-foot (1.5 m) trench. After several other projects with single and triple tracks had failed, on 22 July William Ashbee Tritton, director of the agricultural machinery company William Foster & Company of Lincoln, was given the contract to develop a "Tritton Machine" with two tracks. It had to make use of the track assemblies - lengthened tracks and suspension elements (seven road wheels instead of four) - purchased as fully built units from the Bullock Creeping Grip Tractor Company in Chicago.