Herefordshire

This county covers 842 square miles (2,181 sq km) in West central England, on the Welsh border. The County town is Hertford.

In Herefordshire there are the popular towns of Waltham Cross and Peterchurch.

 

Geography

The County has a very varied landscape with the Wye Valley on the West and the historic City of Hereford at the very centre of the county, the Market Towns of Ledbury and Bromyard in the Malvern Hills, Ross-on-Wye famous for its book shops, the Golden Valley to the West and Hay-on-Wye, with Leominster and Kington to the North set amidst the delightful Black-and-White timbered Villages. Hertfordshire’s countryside is an undulating land, which rises to its greatest height in the Black Mountains. and Malvern Hills. The soils forming the fertile rolling landscape of the valley rest on red sandstone, producing the well known red soils. The Major rivers are the Wye, Lugg, Frome, and Dore. The largest is the River Wye, the source of which is 2000ft above the sea level on Plynlimon in mid-Wales.

 

Industry

The County is mainly agricultural and is famous for its apples and Hereford cattle.

 

History

Early Hereford, in the centre of modern Herefordshire, was a frontier town on the border between kingdoms inhabited by the ancestors of the Welsh and of the English before there were such countries as 'Wales' and 'England'. The Saxons never totally conquered what is now modern Herefordshire as the many Welsh place-names in the county show. Offa’s Dyke, built by King Offa of Mercia in the 8th century, as a border with Wales forms much of the Western boundary. Border warfare with the Welsh was common in the Middle Ages, and there are many ruins of castles and fortifications, built by the Norman Marcher Lords, who were almost independent Lordships. For a time Herefordshire was combined with almost all of Worcestershire to form the county of Hereford and Worcester. Both Counties were re-formed in 1998.