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Where is the North-South divide?

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BrianW

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I think the red line is the most accurate I have seen. The line definitely goes through counties like Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire. The north and south of these counties feel very different. Cities like Nottingham and Derby are very much cities of the Midlands and therefore by most people would be considered to be in the south. Towns in the north of these counties like Mansfield, Worksop and Chesterfield definitely feel like the north. A trip on the Robin Hood Line from Nottingham to Mansfield and Worksop really does feel like you are moving between the two. You don’t have to travel many miles out of Nottingham before it feels like you are definitely in the north.
This works well, as long as we accept something as 'The Midlands', which at least complicates the idea of a North-South (ie binary) divide. You are putting The Midlands into The South. I wonder whether folk in 'The North' put the midlands into The South and people in the south put it 'beyond the pale' ie The North?
 
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Bald Rick

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This works well, as long as we accept something as 'The Midlands', which at least complicates the idea of a North-South (ie binary) divide. You are putting The Midlands into The South. I wonder whether folk in 'The North' put the midlands into The South and people in the south put it 'beyond the pale' ie The North?

Having been a resident of all three:

as a Southerner I regarded the Midlands as much more part of the south than the north
as a Midlander I regarded the Midlands as neither north or south
As a Northerner I regarded the Midlands as definitely south
 

ABB125

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Is there also an internal northern divide, such as the "south north" and "middle north" and "north north"? Does one part of the north consider itself to be "the real north*"?

*Bonus points for naming the book that I'm quoting (or at least, think I'm quoting! :D)...
 

birchesgreen

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North is more or less starts where Stoke is, South starts about where Banbury is. Anything in between is a mythical land or in Daily Mail parlance "there be dragons".
 

PerryPacer

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Is there also an internal northern divide, such as the "south north" and "middle north" and "north north"? Does one part of the north consider itself to be "the real north*"?
Newcastle certainly believes it is The North, and Yorkshire, etc. are all just pretending to be North.
 

AlterEgo

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Newcastle certainly believes it is The North, and Yorkshire, etc. are all just pretending to be North.
To be honest I think the True North starts at the Tees, with Sheffield to Whitby being part of the Liminal North. North, but not in the same way.
 

ABB125

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Newcastle certainly believes it is The North, and Yorkshire, etc. are all just pretending to be North.

To be honest I think the True North starts at the Tees, with Sheffield to Whitby being part of the Liminal North. North, but not in the same way.
Where does the land beyond the wall (Scotland) fit in with all this? :D
 

DynamicSpirit

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Where's the North-South divide? I always tended to imagine that, if you start at the Strait of Gibraltar, it runs East-West through the Mediterranean, possibly loops at the Eastern end to include Israel, roughly passes along the Southern border of Russia. You could argue either way when you get to China, which seems to have moved economically from South of the divide to North of it, does a huge downward loop to include Australia and New Zealand, before crossing Central America and then back to the Strait of Gibraltar.

Oh, was that not what the question was asking? :lol:
 

ABB125

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Where's the North-South divide? I always tended to imagine that, if you start at the Strait of Gibraltar, it runs East-West through the Mediterranean, possibly loops at the Eastern end to include Israel, roughly passes along the Southern border of Russia. You could argue either way when you get to China, which seems to have moved economically from South of the divide to North of it, does a huge downward loop to include Australia and New Zealand, before crossing Central America and then back to the Strait of Gibraltar.

Oh, was that not what the question was asking? :lol:
Surely that north-south divide is called "ThE eQuAtOr"?
 

telstarbox

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Maybe there’s a salient around Mansfield - I don’t know the area well. However I do know the Potteries and Derbyshire better. In the former, Kidsgrove feels very much a part of Stoke, which is in the Midlands and thus South, but Alsager feels very much a part of Cheshire and thus north. Similarly a good friend who grew up in Matlock (and played for Matlock FC) is adamant he’s from the Midlands, and thus South.
Stoke is never in the south. You can buy a house there for 60 grand!

Chinese takeaways in Essex can't cope with "half and half" which as any fule kno is half rice half chips.
The concept of a single "Chinese" cuisine always makes me laugh. It's home to more than a billion people and we'd never go out for "a European" :)
 

CarltonA

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Is there also an internal northern divide, such as the "south north" and "middle north" and "north north"? Does one part of the north consider itself to be "the real north*"?

*Bonus points for naming the book that I'm quoting (or at least, think I'm quoting! :D)...
That could be "Pies and Prejudice", which I enjoyed reading a few years back.
 

Philip

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If going by accents, I would say the north only starts around Manchester, South Yorkshire and Merseyside; although Liverpool/Merseyside feels a bit separate from the stereotyped 'north' of Lancashire and Yorkshire; likewise Newcastle and Sunderland.

Much of Cheshire sounds more southern/RP in the accent than it does northern; Potteries and Derby accents do not sound 'northern' despite some saying they do and neither do strong Brummie and Black Country accents. I would say the general soft West Midlands accent has a more Cockney sound to it than it does Manc, Scouse, Geordie, Lancashire or Yorkshire.
 

Purple Orange

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The north to me is everything from the Scottish border to Cheshire, the Peak District and South Yorkshire. Yet at the same time I feel that people from the main cities in the north have more in common with people from Birmingham and the Black Country, the east end of London, plus north east and south east London than we do with much of rural Northumberland, North Yorkshire and the commuter belt of North Cheshire, which are much closer to the Home Counties in many ways.
 

GusB

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The north to me is everything from the Scottish border to Cheshire, the Peak District and South Yorkshire. Yet at the same time I feel that people from the main cities in the north have more in common with people from Birmingham and the Black Country, the east end of London, plus north east and south east London than we do with much of rural Northumberland, North Yorkshire and the commuter belt of North Cheshire, which are much closer to the Home Counties in many ways.
Tory, you mean? ;)
 

bradleyd

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I think what a lot of people here have said is right, you can't just have a north south divide, you have to have the Midlands in between, where you can say the Midlands is where the south fades out and the north fades in and vice versa. Both boundaries, south - Midlands and Midlands- north aren't a specific thin line either, they're a wide fuzzy band.

I can't do the entire lines for both, but based on growing up within 100m of the tripoint between Kesteven, Holland and Lindsey (traditionally Midlands, south (eastern really) and north respectively) I think the lines below show from the coast to the m1 roughly where I think the boundaries are.

Further west, I think that the boundary between the north and the Midlands follows the boundary between the white peak and the dark peak.

Even though where I grew up is firmly in the Midlands section, definitely felt more northern than Midlands purely because we had look north with Yorkshire news
 

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bussnapperwm

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As a Midlander, the North is Stoke or higher and South is Watford Gap.

My paternal grandfather would disagree as he would say North begins as soon as you stop at Watford Gap services (there again he was a Londoner born and brought up in Walthamstow)!
 

davehsug

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If going by accents, I would say the north only starts around Manchester, South Yorkshire and Merseyside; although Liverpool/Merseyside feels a bit separate from the stereotyped 'north' of Lancashire and Yorkshire; likewise Newcastle and Sunderland.

Much of Cheshire sounds more southern/RP in the accent than it does northern; Potteries and Derby accents do not sound 'northern' despite some saying they do and neither do strong Brummie and Black Country accents. I would say the general soft West Midlands accent has a more Cockney sound to it than it does Manc, Scouse, Geordie, Lancashire or Yorkshire.
The Potteries accent certainly sounds Northern to anyone from South of here! Anyone attempting to imitate it always makes it sound far more Northern than it really is. As an aside, the Potteries accent, particularly a gentle one is often mistaken for scouse, I was often asked if I was from Liverpool in my driving years. I know that sometimes even I can be confused by a very slight scouse accent, and it takes a hard listen to determine whether the origin is Stoke or Liverpool. The propensity to pronounce words like school with 2 syllables - skoo-ul - is probably behind it. I've always suspected that the effect of the North Wales accent on both is behind it.
 

Jimini

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North = anywhere north of Hendon / Finchley / Walthamstow etc. (anywhere north of the north circ.) :lol:
 

ChrisC

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I think what a lot of people here have said is right, you can't just have a north south divide, you have to have the Midlands in between, where you can say the Midlands is where the south fades out and the north fades in and vice versa. Both boundaries, south - Midlands and Midlands- north aren't a specific thin line either, they're a wide fuzzy band.

I can't do the entire lines for both, but based on growing up within 100m of the tripoint between Kesteven, Holland and Lindsey (traditionally Midlands, south (eastern really) and north respectively) I think the lines below show from the coast to the m1 roughly where I think the boundaries are.

Further west, I think that the boundary between the north and the Midlands follows the boundary between the white peak and the dark peak.

Even though where I grew up is firmly in the Midlands section, definitely felt more northern than Midlands purely because we had look north with Yorkshire news
I think the red line on this map is probably about right. I wonder at the western end of the line near the M1 whether it should be drawn no more than 5-10 miles further south. Nottingham is certainly below the red line. The whole area around Mansfield and areas of Derbyshire south of Chesterfield along the M1 certainly feel more like the north. Perhaps it’s the fact that they were all coal mining communities which had more in common with South Yorkshire than the Midlands. They also receive BBC Look North and Yorkshire TV. I think there is a noticeable change of landscape as you drive up the M1 beyond the Mansfield turn at Junction 27.

I live in a village about 10 miles north of Nottingham and it has always seemed like I live almost right on the line between the North and the Midlands (perhaps could be called South). When I drive just 2 or 3 miles north from where I live it really feels like a different world, so then perhaps I’ve entered the North!
 

Philip

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The Map Men's analysis is as good as any other:


In the 2007 study they mention, the resulting line puts Worcester, Birmingham and Coventry in the North and places in North Lincolnshire in or close to 'the South', which doesn't seem right.
 

GrimsbyPacer

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If we are talking about other countries like Scotland, I bet this topic of North and South divides would be interesting on an Irish perspective, forgetting politics, would it align precisely with the current border I wonder.

Nothing will change my mind on the subject, history outweighs geography, accents, poverty, and tv stations, North = Northumbrians areas, Midlands = Mercian areas, West = Wessex areas, East = East Anglian areas, and the rest from Sussex to Essex is the South East. These rough areas are easy to define. An example is the United States, history dictates which states are in the South, not the clear cut longitude lines or the hard to map "redneck" accents. Another is South Australia, which is not even the second most southerly state there.

Anyone looking at a modern road map without further information would cut the line from The Wash to Shropshire, not a bad line if only one needs to be drawn... unless you live in the area it cuts through and know there is no such divide there in reality.
I used to live in Nottinghamshire and can't say I notice anything different from Mansfield to Bulwell to Arnold and Beeston, the towns are very similar, don't see this change others mention.
 
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