From 1845 to1930, civil parishes formed part of Scotland’s local government system. The parishes, which had their origins in the ecclesiastical parishes of the Church of Scotland, often overlapped the then existing county boundaries. Parishes have had no direct administrative function in Scotland since 1930. There are 871 civil parishes in Scotland. The initial version of the Civil Parish boundaries was first created by Geography Branch, GROS in the mid-1960s. The boundaries were plotted on to Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 maps using the written descriptions of the parishes. In the late 1980s the boundaries were digitised using the Geographic Information System, called “GenaMap”. In 2006, GenaMap was replaced by ESRI’s ArcGIS product, and the civil parish boundaries were migrated to the new system. In March-April 2009 many of the coastal postcodes were edited to improve their alignment with MasterMap’s coastal detail. As a result, in May 2009 some of the coastal parishes were edited to ensure that all postcodes’ Gridlink points would fall within the limits of the civil parish boundaries. In terms of provenance, the vast majority of the civil parish boundaries date back to their original drawing in the mid-1960s onto OS 1:10,000 maps.