County town: Worcester
Worcestershire was established as a shire by the 10th century, centred on Worcester — a Roman settlement and early Christian bishopric whose diocese was founded in 679. It incorporates the territory of the Hwicce kingdom.
Worcestershire is a county of the Severn valley and the Malvern Hills, its landscape ranging from the fertile Vale of Evesham — famous for fruit and market gardening — to the wooded Wyre Forest and the edge of the Black Country in the north. Worcester Cathedral, begun in 1084, contains the tomb of King John and remains one of England's finest medieval buildings. The county produced Elgar, whose music drew on its pastoral landscapes. The Battle of Worcester in 1651, the final battle of the Civil War, was fought in its county town. The Three Choirs Festival, shared between Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford, is the world's oldest music festival.
Worcestershire was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 260 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 260 Domesday settlements in WorcestershireEngland'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 Worcestershire 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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