Middlesex

Middlesex Historical Research

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.

England'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.

Research Middlesex's History

An 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.