County town: Mold
Flintshire was the first Welsh county to be created by English legislation, established under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 following Edward I's conquest. It was the smallest Welsh county.
Flintshire is the smallest Welsh county, a narrow strip along the Dee estuary between the Clwydian Hills and the Mersey plain. Its position on the border with England gave it a strongly Anglicised character — Flint, its castle town, was the first of Edward I's great chain of fortresses in north Wales, begun in 1277. It was here that Richard II surrendered to Henry Bolingbroke in 1399, beginning the sequence of events that led to his murder and the Lancastrian usurpation. The county's coal measures and lead mines were exploited from early times, and its industrial character intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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 Flintshire 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 Flintshire. 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 →
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Flintshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.