County town: Brecon
Brecknockshire developed from the medieval marcher lordship of Brecheiniog, incorporating the territory of the early medieval Welsh kingdom of the same name. It became a shire county under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1536.
Brecknockshire is a county of mountains and valleys in south-central Wales, its northern boundary running along the Brecon Beacons — a range of Old Red Sandstone peaks including Pen y Fan, the highest point in southern Britain. Brecon, the county town, was founded as a Norman borough and remains a market town of considerable character. The River Usk runs through the county in a broad valley of exceptional pastoral beauty. Tretower Court and Castle represent two phases of medieval domestic architecture — one Norman military, one late medieval domestic — within the same enclosure. The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal traverses the southern part of the county.
The historic counties of Wales were created under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–42, overlying a much older landscape of Welsh kingdoms — Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth, and Morgannwg — that had shaped settlement, culture, and lordship for centuries. The county of Brecknockshire incorporates territory from these earlier political divisions, and its boundaries preserve traces of the medieval Welsh landscape.
Wales's 13 historic counties were created under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–42, which brought Wales into the English legal and administrative system. Based partly on medieval Welsh kingdoms and Norman lordships, they were the framework of Welsh administration until 1974.
This page introduces the historic county of Brecknockshire. A full Aubrey report for a location within it pulls together everything the record actually holds about that ground, from the geology beneath it to the last coin dropped in a field:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
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An Aubrey report for a specific location in Brecknockshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.