Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county borders South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Nottingham (323,632).
The county has an area of and a population of 1,154,195. The latter is concentrated in the Nottingham built-up area in the south-west, which extends into Derbyshire and has a population of 729,997. The north-east of the county is more rural, and contains the towns of Worksop (44,733) and Newark-on-Trent (27,700). The county is divided into eight districts; seven are part of Nottinghamshire, a two-tier non-metropolitan county, and the City of Nottingham is a unitary area.
The geography of Nottinghamshire is largely defined by the River Trent, which forms a wide valley which crosses the county from the south-west to the north-east. North of this, in the centre of the county, is Sherwood Forest, the remnant of a large ancient woodland.
History
Nottinghamshire lies on the Roman Fosse Way, and there are Roman settlements in the county; for example at Mansfield, and forts such as at the Broxtowe Estate in Bilborough. The county was settled by Angles around the 5th century, and became part of the Kingdom, and later Earldom, of Mercia. However, there is evidence of Saxon settlement at the Broxtowe Estate, Oxton, near Nottingham, and Tuxford, east of Sherwood Forest. The name first occurs in 1016, but until 1568, the county was administratively united with Derbyshire, under a single Sheriff. In Norman times, the county developed malting and woollen industries.
King William I the Conqueror in 1066 made Sherwood Forest a Royal Forest for hunting which was frequently visited by the Mercian and later Kings.
King William I the Conqueror's 1086 Domesday Book identified certain areas in Nottinghamshire being under the land of King Edward the Confessor these included Mansfield and Sutton in Ashfield, amongst other places including Skegby, Dunham-on-Trent, East Drayton, East Markham, Farnsfield, Warsop, Carburton, Edwinstowe, Carlton-on-Trent, Budby, Perlethorpe and Walesby.
King John's Palace ruin near Kings Clipstone was a royal residence for King John, the area being near to Sherwood Forest. King John's Palace was a place where King William the Lion of Scotland met King Richard I of England to congratulate him on his return from the crusades.
John, King of England died at Newark Castle in 1216.
During the industrial revolution, the county held much needed minerals such as coal and iron ore, and had constructed some of the first experimental waggonways in the world; an example of this is the Wollaton wagonway of 1603–1616, which transported minerals from bell pitt mining areas at Strelley and Bilborough, this led to canals and railways being constructed in the county, and the lace and cotton industries grew. In the 18th and 19th centuries, mechanised deeper collieries opened, and mining became an important economic sector, though these declined after the 1984–85 miners' strike.
Until 1610, Nottinghamshire was divided into eight Wapentakes. Sometime between 1610 and 1719, they were reduced to six – Newark, Bassetlaw, Thurgarton, Rushcliffe, Broxtowe, and Bingham, some of these names still being used for the modern districts. Oswaldbeck was absorbed in Bassetlaw, of which it forms the North Clay division, and Lythe in Thurgarton.
Nottinghamshire is famous for its involvement with the legend of Robin Hood. This is also the reason for the numbers of tourists who visit places like Sherwood Forest, City of Nottingham, and the surrounding villages in Sherwood Forest. To reinforce the Robin Hood connection, the University of Nottingham in 2010 has begun the Nottingham Caves Survey, with the goal "to increase the tourist potential of these sites". The project "will use a 3D laser scanner to produce a three dimensional record of more than 450 sandstone caves around Nottingham".
Nottinghamshire was mapped first by Christopher Saxton in 1576; the first fully surveyed map of the county was by John Chapman, who produced Chapman's Map of Nottinghamshire in 1774. The map was the earliest printed map at a sufficiently useful scale (one statute mile to one inch) to provide basic information on village layout, and the existence of landscape features such as roads, milestones, tollbars, parkland, and mills.
Nottinghamshire saw a slight change to its overall boundary in the extreme northern part of the county in 1974, when the villages of Blaxton, Finningley and Auckley (part) were merged into the City of Doncaster in South Yorkshire.