The County of London (in red), super imposed upon today's Greater London area, to show the difference in size with post-1965 Borough boundaries

The County of London was an administrative county of England from 1888 to 1965. It bordered Middlesex to the north and west, Essex to the north-east, Kent to the south-east and Surrey to the south.

It was created as part of the general introduction of county councils and was governed by the London County Council. It did not cover all of today's Greater London, and did not have authority over the City of London. It covered the same area that the Metropolitan Board of Works (which had run London's roads, bridges, etc) had covered, specifically parts of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent - corresponding to today's London Boroughs of Camden, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Westminster.

The county was abolished in 1965 and was replaced by the much larger Greater London, which took in nearly all of Middlesex, along with much of Surrey, Kent, Essex and part of Hertfordshire.

The area of the old County of London is now sometimes known as Inner London. Since the Greater London Council was not an education authority, but London County Council had been, an Inner London Education Authority was constituted to continue this role for the area of the old County of London, and this continued until the 1980s.

Boroughs

Eleven years after its foundation, in 1899, the County of London was divided into metropolitan boroughs, which replaced the ancient parishes and vestries as the second tier of local government. When the County of London was abolished in 1965 these metropolition boroughs were merged to form 12 London boroughs.