County town: London (Middlesex)
Middlesex was the territory of the Middle Saxons, established as a shire in the 9th century. It was the smallest English county by population relative to its area due to London's dominance, and was abolished as an administrative county in 1965 when the area was absorbed into Greater London.
Middlesex occupied the north bank of the Thames from London westward, a small county almost entirely consumed by the growth of London. Its villages — Hampstead, Highgate, Islington, Brentford, Twickenham — were absorbed into the metropolitan area over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Westminster Abbey, founded in its current form by Edward the Confessor in the 1040s, sat within Middlesex and became the coronation church and mausoleum of English monarchs. The county's market gardens and orchards fed London for centuries before suburban development overwhelmed them. Though no longer an administrative unit, Middlesex survives in postal addresses, cricket, and collective memory.
Middlesex was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 61 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 61 Domesday settlements in MiddlesexEngland'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 Middlesex. 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 →
Middlesex contains 111 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 Middlesex draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.