Abstract

Defining the Midlands is a challenge because it is an area which is mostly lacking clear geographical divisions and its boundaries have consequently been drawn along different lines depending on frames of reference. Here, however, ‘the Midlands’ has been taken to encompass 15 counties from five different local government regions: Derbyshire, Leicestershire (including Rutland), Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Nottinghamshire (East Midlands region); Herefordshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire (West Midlands region); Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire (South-East England region); Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (East of England region; and Gloucestershire (South West Region). This area, which could perhaps be better termed ‘the greater Midlands’, including as it does both core and peripheral regions of the traditional Midlands zone is, of course, at one level a function of a prosaic need within this volume to divide the country up into regions for discussion, and in no way seeks to suggest that these 15 counties constitute a meaningful distinct culture-historical pays. Although covering such a large region in a single chapter creates some difficulties, it does also deliver some benefits: encompassing the diverse areas of the ‘greater’ Midlands highlights the ‘fuzziness’ of most historical/geographical/cultural boundaries and allows us to compare and contrast settlement patterns within and beyond the traditional boundaries of the core Midlands pays.