This is about the history of Warwickshire.
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The Warwickshire area has almost certainly been inhabited since Prehistoric times. Remains of barrows and stone tools and axes have been found, mostly along the Avon valley. Also the remains of around twelve Iron Age hill forts have been found in the Warwickshire area.
For the first few decades following the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43, the Warwickshire area found itself at the frontier of Roman rule. The Watling Street and Fosse Way Roman roads were constructed, the Fosse Way marking the western frontier of Roman rule in Britain for several decades. The area was heavily fortified during this period and several military settlements were founded to defend the roads. Ryknild Street was constructed across the Warwickshire area and a fort was established in what is now the grounds of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. The fort was built in about 48 AD by the Roman army as a base camp for its conquest of the Birmingham area [1] and part of a network of forts across the Midlands linked by roads.[2] It stood by Birmingham's earliest known road junction at the point where Icknield Street was met by Roman roads coming in from Droitwich and Penkridge.[1] From here the road runs north to another fort over the county border into Staffordshire at Wall, Roman Etocetum near Lichfield. [2]
Following the revolt in AD60 of the Iceni under their Queen Boudica most scholars have assumed that, after the burning of Colchester and London, Boudica followed Suetonius up Watling Street as he headed for his supply bases and lines of communication near to the milItary frontier.[3] Suetonius offered battle in a strong defensive postion described by Tacitus [4] and many fruitless attempts have been made to be more precise regarding the site of the Battle of Watling Street, the last battle of Boudica. The historian, Dr Graham Webster has suggested it took place near Manduessedum ("the place of the chariots"), modern day Mancetter [5] and miltary finds of armour and military coinage relating to the14th Legion, whom Tacitus [4] records formed part of Suetonius' army, have been found in the region, giving weight to Webster's hypothesis.[3] Another possible site put forward by Jack Lucas is the area east of Rugby, but other theories exist for locations outside of Warwickshire and the exact location is unknown. After the defeat of the Iceni reinforcements were sent by the Romans from Germany [6] and a great supply base was set up at a place called the Lunt in Baginton near Coventry which has the unique feature of a circular arena or gyrus for the breaking in of horses and which could have been a collecting point for Iceni horses after the battle.[3]
Of Roman settlements in Warwickshire one of significant size was Aluana (modern day Alcester). Alcester was an important Roman settlement of around eighteen hectares laying bestride Ryknild Street in a loop of the River Arrow to the west of its confluence with the River Alne, underlying the modern town. Town defences have been confirmed only on the east side of the settlement's circuit, where they consist of a clay rampart dated to the "second century or later", fronted by a 2.75 metre wide wall which was probably not contemporary with the bank. There is also a suspected Roman fort around one kilometre to the south-east of the known Roman settlement located on Primrose Hill which overlooks both the confluence of the River Arrow with the River Alne and the junction of Ryknield Street with the road south from the Roman settlement at Salinae Droitwich Spa, known as the Salt Way after the main export from the area in Roman times. Items of bronze were recovered include a harness ring with a masked loop typical of those used by auxiliary cavalry. The earliest occupation date based on these findings appears to be Flavian.[7] Other significant Roman settlements included Tripontium near Rugby and Manduessedum near Atherstone.[8]
There is evidence of extensive industry in the Warwickshire area during the Roman period. The area around Manduessedum is known to have had an extensive pottery industry, which extended to near what is now Nuneaton, the remains of up to thirty pottery kilns having been found in this area.[9]
After the Romans left Britain in the 4th century, the Warwickshire area was settled by Anglo Saxon tribes becaming a part of the kingdom of Mercia. While its earliest boundaries will never be known, there is general agreement that the territory that was called "the first of the Mercians" in the Tribal Hidage covered much of south Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Northern Warwickshire.[10][11][12]
Following the decline of the Mercian kingdom during the early 9th century, large parts of Mercia to the east of Warwickshire were ceded in 878 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. Between, 911 and 918 this task was undertaken by the "Lady of the Mercians"Ethelfleda, daughter of King Alfred, who was responsible for defences against the Danes at Tamworth (see Tamworth Castle) in 914 and the building of the first parts of Warwick Castle in 916.[13] Periodic fighting between Danes and Saxons occurred until the 11th century. The establishment of the burh by Ethelfleda in 914 and Warwick's subsequent status as a shire town must have given some impetus to economic development. The town was, at any rate, sufficiently important to have had one of the two royal mints set up in Warwickshire (the other was at Tamworth). Coins are first known to have been issued in the reign of Athelstan (925-39). [14] 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 county was initially divided into ten hundreds. The first recorded use of the name Warwickshire being in the year 1001, named after Warwick (meaning "dwellings by the weir"). Warwickshire was invaded in 1016 during the Christmas period by Cnut as part of his ultimately successful invasion against Æthelred the Unready and his son Edmund Ironside,[13] destroying Coventry and massacring the local saint, Osberg, virgin and martyr.[15]
The Norman conquest of England in 1066 brought with it the most active and notable period of military architecture resulting in the building of much of Warwick Castle and others at Kenilworth Maxstoke and Tamworth. Others existed at Anesley near Arley, Aston Cantlow, Baginton, Beaudesert, Bickenhill, Birmingham, Brandon, Brinklow, Caludon at Wyken near Coventry, Castle Bromwich, Coleshill, Fillongley, Fulbrooke, Hartshill, Rugby and Studley, but in many cases only the earthworks can now be seen.[16]
Many of the main settlements of Warwickshire were established in the Middle Ages as market towns, including Birmingham, Bedworth, Nuneaton, Rugby and Stratford-upon-Avon amongst others.
The county was dominated throughout the medieval period by Coventry which became one of the most important cities in England and an important centre of wool and textiles trades. The city has held the title of episcopal see, Lichfield and Coventry, from the time of Earl Leofric early in the 11th century arising from the monastery he and his wife, Godiva, founded in 1043. Henry VI and his queen Margaret of Anjou made several visits to Coventry, and in 1451, as a mark of favour, Coventry and certain hamlets and villages adjacent became an entire and seperate county, the County of the City of Coventry and the Bailiffs raised to the rank of Sheriffs. The Parliamentum Diabolicum assembled in Coventry in 1459 to pass bills of attainder for high treason against the Duke of York and other Yorkist nobles at the start of a new stage of the Wars of the Roses. The citzens remained loyal to Henry in his struggle with Edward IV and when Edward reached the city in 1470, the gates were closed against him. However, when Edward was safely seated on the throne, he withdrew the privileges of the city, only restoring them on payment of a fine of 500 marks[17] Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned at Coventry in 1566, where she lodged in the house of the mayor and again in 1569 where she was confined in the Bull Inn.[18]
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. One notable exception was the town of Leamington Spa which grew from a small village to a medium sized town during the 19th century on the back of the fashionable spa water tourist movement of the time.
Warwickshire became a centre of the national canal system, with major arterial routes such as the Oxford Canal the Coventry Canal and later, what is now the Grand Union Canal being constructed through the county.
One of the first intercity railway lines: the London and Birmingham Railway ran through Warwickshire. And during the 19th century, the county developed a dense railway network.
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 boroughs remained part of the ceremonial county of Warwickshire, which expanded into Worcestershire and Staffordshire as Birmingham annexed surrounding 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.