County town: Aylesbury
Buckinghamshire was established as a shire in the late 10th century, organised around the fortified burh at Buckingham that Alfred's son Edward the Elder had built against the Danes.
Buckinghamshire is a county of two distinct landscapes: the beech-wooded Chiltern Hills in the south and east, and the Vale of Aylesbury, a broad clay plain of towns and farming villages, to the north. The county has long been populous and prosperous, lying on routes between London and the Midlands. Its wooded hills made it a centre of furniture-making in the post-medieval period, centred on High Wycombe. The county's great medieval estates and houses — Stowe, Claydon, West Wycombe — reflect centuries of powerful landowners. The Thames forms its southern boundary with Berkshire and Surrey.
Buckinghamshire was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 221 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 221 Domesday settlements in BuckinghamshireEngland's 39 historic counties, established between the 9th and 12th centuries, are the framework through which English local history, legal records, and landscape have been organised for a thousand years. Most survive today as ceremonial counties, their boundaries deeply embedded in place identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Buckinghamshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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