Ross-shire

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Ross-shire
Historic county
Coat of arms
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Country	Scotland
County town	Dingwall
Area
• Total	3,089 sq mi (8,000 km2)
	Ranked 3rd of 34
Chapman code	ROC (as part of Ross and Cromarty)

Ross-shire (/ˈrɒs.ʃaɪər/; Scottish Gaelic: Siorrachd Rois) is a historic county in the Scottish Highlands. The county borders Sutherland to the north and Inverness-shire to the south, as well as having a complex border with Cromartyshire – a county consisting of numerous enclaves or exclaves scattered throughout Ross-shire's territory. Ross-shire includes most of Ross along with Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Dingwall is the traditional county town. The area of Ross-shire is based on that of the historic province of Ross, but with the exclusion of the many enclaves that form Cromartyshire.^[1]

For shrieval purposes the area was first separated from the authority of the sheriff of Inverness by Act of Parliament during the reign of King James IV, the sheriff to sit at Tain or Dingwall.^[2][3] Sheriffs were seldom appointed, and further acts of 1649 and 1661 restated its separation from Inverness.^[4][5][3] The 1661 act also clarified the area encompassed, based on the pre-Reformation Diocese of Ross.^[5][3] Sir George Mackenzie's Ross-shire estates were transferred to Cromartyshire by a 1685 Act of Parliament (repealed 1686, re-enacted 1690).^[1]

The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 provided that "the counties of Ross and Cromarty shall cease to be separate counties, and shall be united for all purposes whatsoever, under the name of the county of Ross and Cromarty." The two counties that became the single local government county of Ross and Cromarty, which continued to be used for local government purposes until 1975, although Ross-shire remained as the postal county for the mainland part of the local government county until 1996.

In 1975, Ross and Cromarty was itself replaced by the Highland region and the Western Isles, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. The region became a unitary council area in 1996, under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994.

There was a Ross-shire constituency of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801, and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. In 1832 it was merged with the Cromartyshire constituency to form the Ross and Cromarty constituency.