County town: Launceston
Cornwall was the last part of Britain west of the Tamar to be incorporated into the English kingdom, conquered by Athelstan in 936. It became a separate earldom and later a Duchy, created for the Black Prince in 1337.
Cornwall is an Atlantic peninsula of moorland, cliff, and wooded valley, projecting forty miles into the sea between the Bristol Channel and the English Channel. Its Celtic language survived well into the 18th century, and its culture retains a distinctly non-English character. The county's economy was built on tin and copper mining, which made parts of it among the most industrialised landscapes in the world during the 18th and 19th centuries. The moors of Bodmin — home of the legendary King Arthur's country — rise above small valleys of extraordinary beauty. Cornish saints, holy wells, and Iron Age hillforts attest to a pre-English past of exceptional depth.
Cornwall was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 320 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 320 Domesday settlements in CornwallEngland'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.
This page introduces the historic county of Cornwall. 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.
Read in-depth research reports on notable historical places across the UK — explore →
Cornwall contains 1,574 scheduled monuments — sites of national importance protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.
Browse scheduled monuments in EnglandAn Aubrey report for a specific location in Cornwall draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.