County town: Monmouth
Monmouthshire occupied an ambiguous position between England and Wales for centuries. Incorporated into England under the Laws in Wales Act of 1536, it was only formally confirmed as part of Wales by the Local Government Act of 1972.
Monmouthshire occupies the south-east corner of Wales, its Wye valley border with England one of the most beautiful river landscapes in Britain. Tintern Abbey, founded in 1131 on the Wye, inspired Wordsworth's Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (1798) and became one of the defining images of the Romantic movement. The county's ambiguous English-Welsh identity — it was administered as an English county from 1536 to 1974 — gives it a distinctive character. Abergavenny, the 'gateway to Wales', guards the Usk valley passage through the Black Mountains. The eastern valleys around Blaenavon were a cradle of the iron and steel industries; Blaenavon's ironworks are now a World Heritage Site.
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 Monmouthshire 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 Monmouthshire. 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 Monmouthshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.