County town: Nottingham
Nottinghamshire was established as a shire in the 10th century centred on Nottingham, one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. It takes its name from 'Snottingas', the people of Snot — a personal name.
Nottinghamshire straddles the Trent valley, with the coal measures and Sherwood Forest on its western uplands and the flat Trent valley farmland to the east. Sherwood Forest, the legendary home of Robin Hood, was once a vast royal hunting ground covering much of the county's north and west. Nottingham Castle, perched on a sandstone crag, was an important royal fortress throughout the medieval period. The county's lace and hosiery industries, based in Nottingham, made it a significant centre of the East Midlands textile trade from the 18th century. D.H. Lawrence, born at Eastwood in 1885, drew on the county's mining communities for much of his fiction.
Nottinghamshire was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 306 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 306 Domesday settlements in NottinghamshireEngland'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 Nottinghamshire. 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.
Aubrey has published in-depth research reports for 2 notable places in Nottinghamshire. Read in-depth research reports on notable places — explore all of them.
Nottinghamshire contains 170 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 Nottinghamshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.