The Shiring of Hereford

Abstract

The incorporation of Herefordshire within the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England is argued to have occurred in the eleventh century. However, there are good grounds for suggesting that this event came one hundred years earlier, in the late ninth or early tenth century and as a direct result of West Saxon rule. This article explores evidence for the proposition that the territory which eventually became Herefordshire was created as a Mercian satellite province, at an unknown date in the seventh and eighth centuries, being formed out of an aggregation of lands held by small polities, which themselves cohered under the dominance of the Magonsaete no earlier than the late ninth century. By this time the footprint of the shire had been delimited and Hereford’s importance as a burh, as well as its significance as an ecclesiastical and administrative centre, had been established.1