Warwickshire

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Warwickshire

Geography
Status:	Ceremonial & Administrative County
Region:	West Midlands
Area: - Total - Admin. council	Ranked 31st 1,975 km² Ranked 28th
Admin HQ:	Warwick
ISO 3166-2:	GB-WAR
ONS code:	44
NUTS 3:	UKG13
Demographics
Population: - Total (2002 est.) - Density - Admin. council	Ranked 39th 512,680 260 / km² Ranked 23rd
Ethnicity:	95.6% White 2.8% S.Asian
Politics
Warwickshire County Council http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/
Executive:	Labour
MPs:	Andy King, John Maples, Mike O'Brien, Bill Olner, James Plaskitt
Districts
Larger version North Warwickshire Nuneaton and Bedworth Rugby Stratford-on-Avon Warwick

Warwickshire (pronounced worrickshur) is a landlocked county in central England. Modern-day Warwickshire is of a considerably different shape to the historic county. The county town is Warwick.

Famous people from Warwickshire include: William Shakespeare, from Stratford-upon-Avon, George Eliot from near Nuneaton, Rupert Brooke from Rugby, and Frank Whittle from Coventry (then a part of Warwickshire). J. R. R. Tolkien though not born in Warwickshire lived as a child in the village of Sarehole before moving to Birmingham.

Contents

Geography

For local government purposes, Warwickshire is divided into a number of district councils. These are North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Rugby, Stratford, and Warwick.

The historic county of Warwickshire included Coventry, Solihull, and most of Birmingham. These became part of the West Midlands metropolitan county following local government re-organisation in 1974. The town of Tamworth was historically divided between Warwickshire and Staffordshire, but is now fully in Staffordshire

Coventry and Warwickshire are often treated as a single area for some administrative purposes such as NHS administration.

A detailed map

Warwickshire is bounded to the northwest by the West Midlands county (formed in the local government reorganisation of 1974) and Staffordshire, by Leicestershire to the northeast, Northamptonshire to the east, Oxfordshire to the south, Gloucestershire to the southwest, and Worcestershire to the west.

The largest towns in Warwickshire as of 2004 are: Nuneaton ( pop. 77,500), Rugby (62,100), Leamington Spa (42,300), and Bedworth (pop 32,500).

The bulk of Warwickshire's population lives in the north and centre of the county, The north has traditionally been industrial, with towns such as Nuneaton, Bedworth and Rugby whose traditional industries include (or included) coal mining, textiles, cement production, and engineering.

In the centre and west of Warwickshire lie the prosperous towns of Leamington Spa, Warwick, Kenilworth, and Stratford-upon-Avon.

The south of the county is largely rural and sparsely populated, and includes no towns of any significant size. The southern fringe of Warwickshire includes a small area of the Cotswolds.

Historically much of western Warwickshire, including the area now forming part of Birmingham and the West Midlands, was covered by the ancient Forest of Arden (although most of this was cut down to provide fuel for industrialisation in the 17th to 19th centuries). For this reason, several places in the northwestern part of Warwickshire have names with the termination "-in-Arden".

Towns

Selected Villages

Places of interest

History

Main article: History of Warwickshire.

In the 8th and 9th century, what is now Warwickshire was a part of the kingdom of Mercia. In the late 9th century the Mercian kingdom declined and in 874 large parts of Mercia to the east of Warwickshire were ceded to Danish (viking) invaders by King Alfred's Treaty of Wedmore with the Danish leader Guthrum. Watling Street, on the north-eastern edge of Warwickshire, became the boundary between the Danelaw (the kingdom of the Danes) to the east and the much reduced Mercia to the west. There was also a boundary with the kingdom of Wessex to the south.

Owing to its location at the frontier between two kingdoms, what is now Warwickshire needed to establish defences against the threat of Danish invasion. This task was undertaken by Ethelfleda, "Lady of the Mercians" and daughter of King Alfred, who was responsible for the building of the first parts of Warwick Castle. Defences against the Danes were also built at Tamworth (see Tamworth Castle).

Periodic fighting between Danes and Saxons occurred until the 11th century. Because of its castle, Warwick grew into a prosperous market town and a powerful centre within the Mercian kingdom. In the early 11th century, new internal boundaries within the Mercian kingdom were drawn and Warwickshire came into being as the lands administered from Warwick.

The first recorded use of the name Warwickshire was in the year 1001, named for Warwick (meaning "dwellings by the weir").

In the English Civil War in the 17th century the Battle of Edgehill (1642) was fought in Warwickshire, near the Oxfordshire border.

During the 18th and 19th centuries Warwickshire became one of Britain's foremost industrial counties. The coalfields of northern Warwickshire were amongst the most productive in the country, and greatly enhanced the industrial growth of Coventry and Birmingham.

Towns like Nuneaton, Bedworth, and Rugby also became industrialised. The siting of a major railway junction in the town was the key factor in the industrial growth of Rugby.

Towards the end of the 19th century Birmingham and Coventry had become large industrial cities in their own right, and so administrative boundaries had to change. In 1889 the administrative county of Warwickshire was created, and both Coventry and Birmingham became county Boroughs which made them administratively separate from the rest of Warwickshire. Solihull later followed as a county borough. These borougs remained part of the ceremonial county of Warwickshire, which expanded into Worcestershire as Birmingham annexed Worcestershire villages.

This situation lasted until 1974, when the two cities were removed from Warwickshire altogether, and along with parts of Staffordshire and Worcestershire became a part of the new West Midlands metropolitan county.

The remaining post-1974 county of Warwickshire was left with a rather odd shape, which looks as if a large chunk has been bitten out of it where Coventry and Birmingham used to be.

United Kingdom | England | Ceremonial counties of England

Categories: Warwickshire

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