County town: Trowbridge
Wiltshire was established as a shire by the early 10th century, in the heartland of the ancient kingdom of Wessex. Wilton gave the county its name and was an important Saxon royal centre before Salisbury superseded it.
Wiltshire is a county of chalk downland and river valleys, its elevated Salisbury Plain carrying one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric monuments in the world. Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill, and the Ridgeway give the county an archaeological significance matched by no other in England. Salisbury Cathedral, built 1220–1320 in a single campaign, contains the world's oldest working clock and the best-preserved of the four original copies of Magna Carta. The Vale of Pewsey and the valleys of the Avon, Kennet, and Wylye cut through the chalk, supporting prosperous farming and cloth-making towns from the medieval period.
Wiltshire was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 351 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 351 Domesday settlements in WiltshireEngland'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.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Wiltshire 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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