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In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. It is an administrative parish, in contrast to an ecclesiastical parish. A civil parish can range in size from a large town with a population of around 80,000 to a single village with fewer than a hundred inhabitants. In a limited number of cases a parish might include a whole city where city status has been granted by the Monarch. Reflecting this diverse nature, a civil parish may be known as a town, village, neighbourhood or community by resolution of its parish council. Approximately 35% of the English population live in a civil parish. As at 31 December 2010 there were 10,479 parishes in England.〔(Office for National Statistics )〕 On 1 April 2014, Queen's Park became the first civil parish in Greater London.〔(Queen's Park parish council gets go-ahead ) BBC〕 Before 2008 their creation was not permitted within a London borough. ==History== ===Ancient origins=== The division of land into ancient parishes was linked to the manorial system: parishes and manors often covered the same area and had the same boundaries. The manor was the principal unit of local administration and justice in the early rural economy. Later the church replaced the manor court as the rural administrative centre, and levied a local tax on produce known as a tithe.〔 In the medieval period, responsibilities such as relief of the poor passed increasingly from the Lord of the Manor to the parish's rector, who in practice would delegate tasks among his vestry or the (often well-endowed) monasteries. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the power to levy a rate to fund relief of the poor was conferred on the parish authorities by the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601. Both before and after this optional social change, local (vestry-administered) charities are well-documented.〔Victoria County Histories provides, for most parishes but not all, evidence of local private charities with details.〕 The parish authorities were known as vestries and consisted of all the ratepayers of the parish. As the number of ratepayers of some parishes grew, it became increasingly difficult to convene meetings as an open vestry. In some, mostly built up, areas the select vestry took over responsibility from the entire body of ratepayers. This innovation improved efficiency, but allowed governance by a self-perpetuating elite.〔 The administration of the parish system relied on the monopoly of the established English Church, which for a few years after Henry VIII alternated between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, before settling on the latter on the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558. By the 18th century, religious membership was becoming more fractured in some places, due for instance to the progress of Methodism. The legitimacy of the parish vestry came into question and the perceived inefficiency and corruption inherent in the system became a source for concern in some places.〔 For this reason, during the early 19th century the parish progressively lost its powers to ''ad hoc'' boards and other organisations, for example the loss of responsibility for poor relief through the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. Sanitary districts covered England in 1875 and Ireland three years later. The replacement boards were each entitled to levy their own rate in the parish. The church rate ceased to be levied in many parishes and became voluntary from 1868.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Civil parishes in England」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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