Bedfordshire

Woburn Abbey

Bedfordshire, geographic and historic county and former administrative county of the southeastern Midlands of England. The administrative county was abolished in 2009, with two of its three former districts—Mid Bedfordshire and South Bedfordshire—reconstituted as the new unitary authority of Central Bedfordshire, with the third, the borough of Bedford, also designated as a unitary authority. The geographic county of Bedfordshire also includes the unitary authority of Luton.

The historic county coincides roughly in area with the geographic county, but its boundary departs from that of the former administrative county in three places. The town of Linslade in Central Bedfordshire lies in the historic county of Buckinghamshire, and a small area north of Sandy in the northeastern portion of Central Bedfordshire belongs to the historic county of Cambridgeshire. The historic county of Bedfordshire, however, includes the town of Eaton Socon, which lies in Huntingdonshire district in the administrative county of Cambridgeshire.

Settlement in Bedfordshire is very ancient. In the early Bronze Age (c. 1800 bce) the Beaker people, immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean with a highly developed culture, settled in the Ouse valley. Roman settlement (1st–5th century ce) was concentrated in the south of the county, with Dunstable (Roman Durocobrivae) as an important route centre. After the Roman withdrawal the area was settled by invading Anglo-Saxons and Danes; Bedford itself was founded by Danes. The shire was first mentioned as a political unit in 1010.