High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a civil parish is a territorial designation, and in parts of the UK the lowest tier of local government, below district and county councils. The civil parish has its origins in the system of ecclesiastical parishes, but civil parishes have often deviated from the latter's borders as time has progressed. As there is no common stratum of local governance across the countries of the United Kingdom, the use of civil parishes varies between England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Some places in England and Wales, typically within cities or towns, may be unparished areas. Civil parishes in the Republic of Ireland have no administrative function but remain defined cadastre units. Civil parishes ranged from individual settlements and their immediate environs to areas of thousands of acres containing many settlements to densely populated divisions of cities.