County town: Greenlaw
Berwickshire takes its name from Berwick-upon-Tweed, though that town has been in England since 1482. The county was established as a sheriffdom in the medieval period and its county town was Greenlaw, later Duns.
Berwickshire is a Border county of rolling farmland, the Lammermuir and Moorfoot Hills, and the Tweed valley. Despite its name, Berwick-upon-Tweed — the most fought-over town in Britain, changing hands between England and Scotland thirteen times — has been English since 1482. The county's fertile Merse lowlands are among the most productive arable lands in Scotland. Coldstream, on the Tweed, gave its name to the regiment raised there in 1650. Dryburgh Abbey, burial place of Sir Walter Scott, lies across the border in Roxburghshire. The county has a quiet, prosperous character shaped by its agriculture and its border history.
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland — the Old Statistical Account (1791–99) and the New Statistical Account (1834–45) — provide detailed parish-by-parish descriptions of Berwickshire at two moments of transformation. Aubrey draws on these accounts when generating reports for Scottish locations, providing historical context specific to the parish and county.
Scotland's 33 traditional counties, established as sheriffdoms from the 12th century onward, were the administrative framework of the country until the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975 replaced them with regional councils. They remain the reference framework for historical records, genealogy, and cultural identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Berwickshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data, Statistical Account records, and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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