Midlands

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See also Midlands (disambiguation).

In general, the midlands of a territory are its central regions. The Midlands (with a capital M) usually means the English Midlands, which broadly correspond to the early-medieval kingdom of Mercia.

The area lies between Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales, and is generally considered to include the counties of Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, the West Midlands and Worcestershire.

Image:EnglandGovernmentMidlands.png

The Midlands is often divided into the West Midlands and East Midlands. These are both administrative regions of England, but do not fully cover the traditional region of the Midlands. They exclude parts of northern Lincolnshire, now part of Yorkshire and the Humber, and Peterborough, which was once part of Northamptonshire but is now included with Cambridgeshire in the East of England Region.

Its largest conurbation, which includes the cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, is approximately covered by the West Midlands metropolitan county although this also includes Coventry. Confusingly this is a much smaller area than the West Midlands region. Parts of the East Midlands are also densely populated, particularly the triangle formed by the cities of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby.

Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire are also sometimes considered to be part of the Midlands, albeit at the far southern edge (the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica describes Gloucestershire as "west midland", Bedfordshire as "south midland", and Huntingdonshire as "east midland" counties respectively.) Cheshire is not generally considered to be in the Midlands, but rather a part of the North West.

The South Midlands is an area identified by the government for development, consisting of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire with northern Buckinghamshire. Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire are not usually considered part of the Midlands and are in the administrative regions of the South East and the East of England respectively—a further illustration of the fluidity of the perceived boundaries of the Midlands.

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