The three ridings of Yorkshire came into being during the Norse period, surrounding the administratively distinct City of York. The main towns are Middlesbrough, Northallerton, Redcar, Scarborough and Whitby, and when the modern North Yorkshire council area was formed in 1974, it covered most of the North Riding, took bites out of the East and West Ridings, and swallowed York whole.
There are all sorts of smallerscale administrative wrinkles that genealogists will have to watch out for. Langbaurgh, for example, was a - an Old Norse term for an administrative division, which survives in several English counties. Langbaurgh covered a north-eastern tip of
