HEREFORDSHIRE

County of Herefordshire
Herefordshire
Geography
Status	Unitary district Ceremonial county
Origin	Historic
Region	West Midlands
Area: - Total - District	Ranked 26th 2,180 km² Ranked 3rd
Admin HQ	Hereford
	GB-HEF
ONS code	00GA
NUTS 3	UKG11
Demographics
Population - Total () - Density - District	Ranked / km² Ranked
Ethnicity	99.1% White
Politics
Arms of County of Herefordshire District Council Herefordshire Council http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/
Executive
MPs	★ Paul Keetch (LD) ★ Bill Wiggin (C)

::''For the similarly named county in the South East region, see Hertfordshire.''
'Herefordshire' (pronounced ) is a historic and ceremonial county in the West Midlands region of England. It also forms a unitary district known as the 'County of Herefordshire'. It borders the English ceremonial counties of Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south east and the Welsh preserved counties of Gwent to the south west and Powys to the west. Hereford is a cathedral city and is the county town; with a population of approximately 50,000 inhabitants, it's also the largest settlement. The county is one of the most rural and least densely populated in England, being a largely agricultural area which is primarily known for its fruit and cider production. Its county flower is the Mistletoe.

Contents

History

Cities, towns and villages

Economy

Education

Agriculture

Fruit

Dairy

Potatoes

Places of interest

Transport

Road

Rail

Air

Waterways

References

External links

History

Main articles: History of Herefordshire

Herefordshire is one of the 39 historic counties of England.
In 1974 it was merged with neighbouring Worcestershire to form the relatively short-lived Hereford and Worcester non-metropolitan county. Within this, Herefordshire was covered by the districts of South Herefordshire, Hereford, and part of Malvern Hills and Leominster districts.
On 1 April 1998 it was split out again, in the form of a unitary authority, with broadly the same borders as before. It is the second largest unitary area in England, after the East Riding of Yorkshire.^[1]

Cities, towns and villages

Main articles: List of places in Herefordshire

The major settlements in the county include Hereford, which is the county town and Herefordshire's only city, as well as the towns of Leominster, Ledbury, Ross On Wye, Kington and Bromyard.
''See also and .''

Economy

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Herefordshire at current basic prices published by the ''Office for National Statistics'' with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.^[2]

Year	Regional Gross Value Added	Agriculture	Industry	Services
1995	'1,622'	218	567	836
2000	'1,885'	155	643	1,087
2003	'2,216'	185	708	1,323

includes hunting and forestry
includes energy and construction
includes financial intermediation services indirectly measured
Components may not sum to totals due to rounding
Well known companies in Herefordshire are Bulmer's cider in central Hereford, with its UK market leader, Strongbow. PGL Holidays is based in Ross-on-Wye.

Education

Herefordshire has a comprehensive education system with seven independent schools. Most state schools are from 11-16. Sixth form provision is limited. Around 2000 pupils take GCSEs in Herefordshire each year at age 16. The England average for attaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths is 45.8%; for Herefordshire it is 48.2% - a good result, but typical of rural counties. There are few bad schools in the county, with the best being the Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School, followed by the Fairfield High School (both in Hereford) and the Lady Hawkins High School in Kington. The worst (by a large amount) is the Wyebridge Sports College in south Hereford near Lower Bullingham. A-level performance is disappointing with the exception of the excellent results from the Hereford Sixth Form College. Sixth form colleges have a habit of doing very well, and in this case, it has saved Herefordshire's educational future. Luckily, most Herefordshire A level students go to that sixth form college and consequently, Herefordshire gets the best overall results at A level (by a country mile) in the West Midlands, well above the England average.

Agriculture

Agriculture has changed massively in recent years within the county. The county is in the west of England which has been historically pastoral as opposed to the east which was more arable.

Fruit

The county is famous for its apple and pear orchards, and of course its cider. There are many orchards around the county but not as many as there once was.
In the last few years, soft fruits such as strawberries have become a new and rapidly expanding area of the agricultural economy of the county. One of the main reasons for this was the introduction of the polytunnel. This allowed the strawberries to be grown for a far longer season and at a higher quality (no blemishes from the rain). The strawberries are mainly picked by Eastern European "students" who come over for the season to earn some money, more than they could working in their country of origin and with the bonus, for many of them, of learning or improving their English. The polytunnels have been a major issue in the county, as some people see them as a "blot on the landscape".
Although some polytunnel sites are technically illegal, Herefordshire council has chosen to ignore legal ruling in the belief that if agriculture is to survive, then it must be allowed to innovate; otherwise, the industry will stagnate and the county will suffer.

Dairy

There was a time when the majority of farms in the county would have had dairy cattle for milk production. The cost of investing in new equipment, long hours, BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and mainly the falling milk prices have meant that the milk production has drastically reduced, with only a few farms still in dairy farming.

Potatoes

As mentioned above, the county is historically pastoral. The soils are mostly clay, meaning that large scale potato production was very difficult, as tractors were not powerful enough to pull the large machinery required to harvest the crop. Around the early 1990s new technology and more powerful machines overcame this problem. Potato production started to increase, fuelled by a few other key factors: The previously pastoral soils had not had potatoes grown in them; consequently they were not infected with eelworm (''Heterodera rostochiensis'' and ''Heterodera pallida''), which in the east of England had to be sprayed against weekly (a large cost). Also, the clay soil produced an unblemished potato of the highest grade. The intensive nature of the crop meant that potatoes could be grown viably on a given field in only one of every five years. Because potato growers always needed more land than they owned, they rented. This demand for rental fields came at a time when the rest of the industry was struggling and in serious decline. The potato farmers' rents of £300-500/acre (as opposed to normally £80/acre) were very helpful to many farmers in a difficult period.

Places of interest

★ Abbey Dore Court

★ Berrington Hall

★ Courtyard Centre for the Arts

★ Dore Abbey

★ Eastnor Castle

★ Eye Manor

★ Hampton Court

★ Hellens Manor

★ Hereford Cathedral

★ Malvern Hills

★
★ Herefordshire Beacon

★ Priory Church

Transport

Road

The M50, one of the first motorways to be built in the UK, runs through the south of the county and, with the A40 dual carriageway, forms part of the major route linking South Wales and the West Midlands.
The hilly nature of the terrain in Mid Wales means that the main ground transport links between North Wales and South Wales run through Herefordshire. The other trunk roads in Herefordshire, the A49 and the A465, form part of these north–south routes as well as catering for local traffic. These are single-carriageway roads and mean that travelling through the county is often slow. In particularly Hereford is a major congestion point with all traffic having to pass over one dual-carriageway bridge in the centre of town. Subsequently traffic can jam and leave the city in gridlock in rush hour. In times of flood a roundabout on the south side of the bridge is impassable leaving the south of the city almost stranded. In 2006, ASDA supermarkets opened a controversial supermarket scheme connecting to this small roundabout on a flood plain. This project has large flood defences and the roundabout has been replaced by traffic lights and the road level raised as part of the project.

Rail

The Welsh Marches Railway Line also runs north–south with passenger trains operated by Arriva Trains Wales offering links to North West and South West England as well as to North and South Wales. Hereford is the western end of the Cotswold Line which runs via Worcester with through services to Oxford and London (operated by First Great Western and FGWL) and to Birmingham and Nottingham (operated by Central Trains).
Former routes which are now closed were Ledbury to Gloucester; Hereford to Ross-on-Wye and onward to Gloucester and Monmouth; Hereford to Hay-on-Wye; Pontrilas to Hay-on-Wye; Leominster to New Radnor; Eardisley to Presteign; and Leominster to Worcester via Bromyard.

Air

There are no airports with scheduled air services in Herefordshire though Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol International Airports are all within reach and the RailAir^[3] coach operated by First Great Western provides connections from Heathrow via Reading station. Shobdon Aerodrome near Leominster is a centre for general aviation and gliding. Hot air ballooning is also popular with Eastnor Castle being one of the favourite launch sites in the area.

Waterways

Historically, the Rivers Wye and Lugg were navigable but the wide seasonal variations in water levels mean that few craft larger than canoes and coracles are now used. There are canoe centres at The Boat House, Glasbury-on-Wye, the Hereford Youth Service and Kerne Bridge Ross-on-Wye, as well as a rowing club in Hereford.
The early nineteenth century saw the construction of two canals, The Hereford & Gloucester Canal^[4] and The Leominster & Stourport Canal^[5] but these were never successful and there are now few remains to be seen.

References

1. http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/docs/Hfds_Facts_Figs.pdf
2. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/RegionalGVA.pdf (pp.240-253).
3. http://www.railair.com
4. http://www.smr.herefordshire.gov.uk/post-medieval/canals/hereford_gloucester.htm
5. http://www.smr.herefordshire.gov.uk/post-medieval/canals/leominster_stourport.htm

External links

★ The Hereford Times Local news, sport & information

★ Herefordshire County Portal Local events, jobs, photos and news

★ Herefordshire Libraries 10 Libraries across Herefordshire