I come from Corby, which most would say is located in the South of England (but more specifically the East Midlands). Maybe Corby is an anomaly which I'm inclined to believe it is, but when I grew up there it definitely had a different culture to its neighbouring towns. It was a steelworks town and had a large Scottish population, due to the fact that many Scots moved down there to work in the steelworks. I was born and raised in England, but I was brought up on Oor Wullie and The Broons comics, tablet, Irn Bru, mince and tatties and basically everything else Scottish you can think of. I had Glaswegian grandparents and even now I'm proud to say I have the superpower of understand Glaswegians despite never having lived in Glasgow, haha. So I guess Corby wasn't a Northern town... just a miniature Scotland... but in a cultural sense it definitely had more in common with the North of England than with the South. Incomes may have been lower, flat caps may have been common, but everyone spoke to each other in the streets and Corby has always taken its community seriously. Even now, it maintains a yearly Highland Gathering and has a wonderful radio station and it just feels like everyone knows everyone...
Of course Corby is changing fast. It has had a lot of money pumped into it recently with tons of new facilities, which is awesome (most of my family still lives there, so I'm happy Corby is improving) but plenty of migrants too, from many different locations.
A lot of you might have heard of Corby as this dreadful, run down town rife with crime and with every building boarded up. This would've been the aftermath of the steelworks closing down and back in the late 90's or early 2000's, it was definitely a miserable place to be. But it has become a much nicer place to live since then and even back in those dark days there were some beautiful places to live. As a new town the streets were never narrow and we didn't have terraces housing everywhere. The streets were wide, planted with trees and many of them looked lovely in the Summer. I always loved walking around Corby back when I lived there.
I dunno where I'm going with this. But it's weird to consider this North/South divide and have Corby firmly planted in the South, despite being nothing like what people perceive the South to be. I think culture will honestly vary from town to town, regardless of where it is on the UK map. So it's difficult to draw a line - even a squiggly line - across the middle of England and call it a day.
I don't care all that much though, I'm just kind of bored. Plus I miss Corby. I don't live there anymore, but my whole family does and I like going to see them from time to time, haha!