Curated playlist
Counties of England established in antiquity
- HertfordshireHertfordshire's name comes from an Anglo-Saxon phrase for a deer crossing a river. The county sits just north of London.
- SurreySurrey, an English county, is where Magna Carta was sealed in June 1215.
- EssexColchester in Essex was minting its own coins before Julius Caesar crossed the Channel.
- SuffolkIn 1797, John Frere found flint hand axes twelve feet down in a Hoxne brick pit. He suggested they were extremely old.
- KentWilliam the Conqueror could not subdue Kent. Its people negotiated favorable terms in 1067.
- ShropshireIn Shropshire, the world's first iron-framed building went up in Shrewsbury.
- WarwickshireWarwickshire once held Birmingham and Coventry, but lost both in 1974. Its cricket club still plays in Birmingham.
- DevonDevon is the only English county with two separate coastlines. One faces the Bristol Channel and the Celtic Sea in the north. The other faces the English Channel in the south. The county sits across a peninsula in South West England, and…
- County DurhamCounty Durham was once ruled by bishops who could raise armies and mint coins. The title Prince-Bishop began in 1075.
- WorcestershireA DreamWorks director set a film in Worcestershire because people keep mispronouncing it.
- MiddlesexThe English county of Middlesex was abolished on the 1st of April 1965. London had already swallowed it whole.
- BedfordshireOne of two First World War airship sheds in Bedfordshire now houses an airship maker.
- DerbyshireOne Derbyshire farm is the furthest point from the sea in the entire United Kingdom.
- City of LondonIn the City of London, most voters represent businesses, not residents.
- YorkshireYorkshire was abolished as a county in 1974, yet it never went away.