County town: Winchester
Hampshire is one of the oldest English shires, the heartland of Wessex and the kingdom that unified England. Winchester was the capital of Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest shifted power to London.
Hampshire stretches from the chalk downlands of the north — where the rivers Test, Itchen, and Meon rise — to the Channel coast at Southampton Water and the Solent. The New Forest, created by William the Conqueror as a hunting ground around 1079 at the displacement of local communities, still covers much of the county's west. Winchester Cathedral, begun in 1079, is the longest medieval cathedral in the world and contains the tombs of Saxon kings. Southampton, protected by the Solent, was England's principal port for Atlantic trade from the medieval period to the 20th century. Jane Austen lived and died in the county.
Hampshire was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 448 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 448 Domesday settlements in HampshireEngland'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 Hampshire. 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 →
Hampshire contains 795 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 Hampshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.