County Dossier
Gloucestershire
County of abbeys, Cotswolds and old market towns.
Gloucestershire is a county in south-west England with three distinct landscapes. To the east, the Cotswold Hills extend into neighbouring counties, celebrated for their rolling hills and honey-coloured stone villages such as Bibury, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping Camden, Lower Slaughter, Stow-on-the-Wold, Stroud, and Winchcombe.
At a glance
Gloucestershire at a glance
County of abbeys, Cotswolds and old market towns.
- Roman town of Glevum
- Shire by early medieval
- Abbeys, markets, hillforts
- Area: 1,293 sq miles / 3,349 sq km
- Population: 1,147,106
- County Top: Cleeve Hill (1,082ft / 330m)
County Geography
Gloucestershire is shaped by the Severn vale in the centre, the Cotswold rise in the east, and the Forest of Dean between Severn and Wye in the west. It meets Herefordshire and Worcestershire to the north, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire on the east and south-east, and Somerset and Monmouthshire on the southern and western sides.
Few counties have such a strong internal three-part structure of vale, hill, and forest. That physical geography keeps Gloucestershire legible as a county.
Map Reference
View Gloucestershire on the map
Gloucestershire is the county. The map also shows lieutenancies and council areas that use the county name.
The county.
The lieutenancy.
Council areas.
Places and routes
Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester, and Stroud explain the county from its Severn-side city and spa town to its Roman-Cotswold centre and edge-of-escarpment valley town, with Tewkesbury marking the northern river boundary.
Connections
The Severn corridor and the roads along and across the Cotswold edge have long organised movement through Gloucestershire. The county works as practical geography because those routes fit a stable county frame.
Names
- Gloucestershire
- County of Gloucester
- Gloucs
County of Gloucester is the formal historical style. Gloucs is the familiar short form, while the county name itself reflects the shire built around Gloucester and the older Roman and English continuity of that centre.
Gloucestershire was established in the early medieval shire framework and appears in Domesday as a settled county. Vale, escarpment, river, and forest still form one recognisable historic county.