Bob Hardy, the late Bishop of Lincoln, once described his diocese as "two thousand square miles of bugger all". But it used to be even bigger. In 1837 it reached as far south as Hertfordshire.
In the same year, the Archdeaconry of Nottingham was transferred to Lincoln from York. In 1884 it became a diocese in its own right with Southwell Minster as its cathedral.
But Southwell has never been a city, even though the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica described it as one.
According to the Wikipedia article on city Status in the United Kingdom it was not made one in 1884 because it was a village without a borough corporation and therefore could not petition the Queen.
That article is an entertaining rabbit hole, incidentally. You will learn that Rochester lost its city status in the 1990s because it failed to react nimbly enough to the endless local government reorganisations we ow go in for.
But the point of this article is to salute the chutzpah, or whatever its Nottinghamshire equivalent is, of the local football team, which has always played as Southwell City.
The club's website (sort of) explains:
Southwell City was formed in 1893 and plays its football on the Memorial Ground in the shadow of the magnificent Norman Minister which became a Cathedral just prior to the club’s formation. Hence the name Southwell City, despite the fact that City status has never officially been conferred on the market town.
Good for it!
Is the question of city status closed? Southwell may not have been a borough in the 1880s, but it does have an active town council now. And if it were the smallest city in England, taking the title from Wells, that would surely attract visitors and boost its economy.
If this were an old British film, there would be a meeting of townsfolk about this continued slight and a spirited girl would get up and say "Come on! What are we waiting for?"
