County town: Montgomery
Montgomeryshire was created as a shire county under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1536, incorporating parts of the former kingdom of Powys. Montgomery itself was a Norman border castle town.
Montgomeryshire is the least populated of the Welsh counties, a large upland county of the middle Severn valley and the rolling moorlands of the Cambrian Mountains. Montgomery, its county town, is a small town of exceptional character beneath its ruined Norman castle. The upper Severn runs through the county's heart. Welshpool, the county's largest town, houses Powis Castle — whose terraced gardens, hanging above the Severn valley, are among the finest in Britain. The county's economy has always been based on hill farming. Offa's Dyke runs along much of its eastern border. The county was the birthplace of the mathematician Robert Recorde, who invented the equals sign.
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 Montgomeryshire 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.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Montgomeryshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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