Counties, cities and regions of the UK
Geography · Key Stage 2 · The School
Four nations, one state
The United Kingdom is made of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with capitals London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Great Britain is the island holding England, Scotland and Wales — so Northern Ireland is in the UK but not in Great Britain. The Republic of Ireland is a separate country and not part of either.
Counties, cities and regions
Below the nations, the UK is divided into COUNTIES — Yorkshire, Kent, Powys — and grouped into REGIONS such as the North West, the Midlands and the South East. Major cities include Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle. Knowing roughly where each sits lets you make sense of any news story or weather map.
Land that changed its job
Land use is what land is used FOR: farming, housing, industry, transport, forest, moorland. It changes. Manchester’s cotton mills became flats and offices; South Wales coalfields became forest and business parks; farmland at the edge of every large city became housing. Comparing an old map with a new one of the same place shows the change directly.
Write it out from small to large for where you live: street, town or city, county, region, country, and then United Kingdom. For example: Kirkgate → Leeds → West Yorkshire → Yorkshire and the Humber → England → United Kingdom. Each level is inside the one after it. Now do the same for Cardiff or Belfast and notice where the country changes but the UK does not.