County town: Presteigne
Radnorshire was one of the marcher counties of Wales, established under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1536. It incorporated part of the former kingdom of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren (Between Wye and Severn) and the lordship of Radnor.
Radnorshire is the most sparsely populated county in England and Wales, a high moorland county of the mid-Wales border where the Wye and Ithon rise. Presteigne, its county town, and Llandrindod Wells, its largest settlement, reflect both the ancient market-town character and the Victorian spa-town development of mid-Wales. The Elan Valley, flooded in the 1890s to supply water to Birmingham, occupies much of the county's west with a dramatic series of reservoirs and Victorian dams. Offa's Dyke runs along the county's eastern edge. The Radnor Forest, a high moorland massif, remains one of the most remote landscapes in Wales.
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 Radnorshire 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 Radnorshire 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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