Bristol broke away from Gloucestershire in 1373 as England's third city
Gloucestershire once contained Bristol, then a modest town. By 1373 the port had grown into England's third-largest city and became a county of its own. The rural shire it left behind still straddles the River Severn, with the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west.
This ceremonial county in South West England covers 3,150 square kilometres and had an estimated 975,712 residents in 2024. Its neighbours range from Herefordshire and Worcestershire to Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Somerset, with Monmouthshire in Wales to the west. Gloucester is the largest settlement, with the spa town of Cheltenham beside it, and market towns such as Tewkesbury, Cirencester and Stroud scattered across the countryside. Its far south, around Filton and Kingswood, merges into Bristol's urban sprawl.
The Severn enters near Tewkesbury, runs down a broad central valley and widens into a great tidal estuary. East of the river lies most of the Cotswolds; to the west rise the Forest of Dean and the Wye Valley. Each of these carries national landscape status.
The shire probably took shape in the tenth century and is named in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, though Winchcombe and the Forest of Dean were only added in the late eleventh. In the late Middle Ages it hosted rich monasteries at Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Hailes and Cirencester, and the Forest of Dean was a major source of iron. The Industrial Revolution largely passed it by, although Gloucester's port gained new docks and a small coalfield was worked in the Forest. Borders kept shifting: some northern parishes moved to Warwickshire in 1931, and Bristol and its surroundings spent 1974 to 1996 in the county of Avon. When Avon was abolished, the area north of Bristol returned as the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire.
In July 2007 the county suffered some of the worst floods in recorded British history. Tens of thousands of residents were affected, the RAF mounted its largest peacetime domestic operation to rescue more than 120 people, and damage was estimated at over £2 billion. A year later, in March 2008, Gloucestershire adopted its own flag after a public contest.
Source: Gloucestershire
