Administrative Boundary of Nottinghamshire

About Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. Covering approximately 2,160 square kilometres of rolling agricultural land, ancient forest, and mining heritage from the Pennine fringe in the west to the Trent Vale in the east, Nottinghamshire had a population of approximately 840,000 at the 2021 Census (excluding the unitary authority of Nottingham). The county is world-famous through the legend of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest, but also contains the magnificent Norman minster church of Southwell, the ancestral home of Lord Byron, and a rich literary heritage associated with D.H. Lawrence. Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood Sherwood Forest — the ancient royal hunting forest that once covered much of northern Nottinghamshire — is the legendary home of Robin Hood, the outlaw folk hero who robs from the rich to give to the poor. Though no historical Robin Hood has ever been conclusively identified, the legend — rooted in the forest landscapes of medieval Nottinghamshire — has generated one of the most recognisable and enduring characters in English popular culture, celebrated in ballads from at least the 14th century, in the plays of the Elizabethan theatre, and in hundreds of films, television series, and novels. The Major Oak at Edwinstowe — a vast, ancient pedunculate oak with a girth of approximately 10 metres, estimated to be between 800 and 1,000 years old — is the most famous tree in England, traditionally associated with Robin Hood's hideout. Sherwood Forest Country Park at Edwinstowe, managed by Nottinghamshire County Council, is visited by nearly 500,000 people annually. Southwell Minster Southwell Minster — the Cathedral and Parish Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Southwell — is one of the most satisfying and intimate of English medieval churches, largely unknown outside the East Midlands but of exceptional quality. The minster was founded as a collegiate church in the 10th century; the present building is substantially Norman (c. 1108–1200), with two massive square towers at the west end and a remarkable carved Norman tympanum in the south transept. The Chapter House (c. 1290) is a masterpiece of English Decorated Gothic architecture, its naturalistic carvings of oak, maple, hawthorn, hops, and bryony leaves — executed with extraordinary precision and vitality — representing the finest medieval naturalistic carving in England and earning the minster the title of "the Cathedral in the Fields." Lord Byron and Newstead Abbey Newstead Abbey, on the edge of Sherwood Forest near Ravenshead, was the ancestral seat of the Byron family and the home of George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), the most celebrated English Romantic poet. Byron inherited the abbey — a former Augustinian priory founded c. 1163 and converted to a house after the Dissolution — in 1798 at the age of ten and lived there intermittently from 1808 to 1814, during which period he wrote many of his early poems. The abbey and grounds, now managed by Nottingham City Council, preserve Byron's private apartments, manuscripts, and personal effects in a setting of remarkable Gothic romance. D.H. Lawrence Country David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) — the author of Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover, one of the most influential novelists in the English language — was born and grew up in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the son of a coal miner. The landscape of the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfield — its villages, collieries, churches, and social life — profoundly shaped Lawrence's fiction. Eastwood has several heritage sites associated with Lawrence's childhood, and the wider landscape of "Lawrence country" is explored through heritage trails. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Nottinghamshire County Council is available for free download in GeoJSON and KML formats, sourced from the ONS Open Geography Portal (Crown copyright 2024). Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Google Earth, the dataset supports woodland conservation, literary heritage mapping, Romanesque architecture research, mining landscape analysis, and demographic studies across the Nottinghamshire local authority area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Nottinghamshire county