Hereford and Worcester: history of a merged English county

Geography and principal places

The merged county spanned a mix of agricultural lowlands, river valleys and hills. It included the cathedral cities of Hereford and Worcester and a number of market towns and industrial centres. Typical communities ranged from rural parishes in the west to former industrial towns in the east and pockets of private and public-sector employment.

• Major settlements included Hereford and Worcester themselves.
• Other notable towns were Kidderminster, Malvern, Bromsgrove, Redditch and Evesham.
• Landscape features of note included river corridors such as the Severn and upland fringes like the Malvern Hills.

Origin, administration and reaction

The county was formed under the Local Government Act 1972, which redrew many county boundaries and created new administrative counties from 1974. It had a county council responsible for services such as education and highways. The merger proved controversial: many residents and local bodies felt the new county diluted historic identities and administrative traditions of both Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

Because of these local objections and changing policy on local government structure, the arrangement was reviewed in the 1990s. The single county was abolished in the late 1990s and the area was reorganised so that Herefordshire regained a distinct administrative identity and Worcestershire was restored as a separate county.

The short-lived existence of Hereford and Worcester is often cited in discussions of identity and the limits of top-down administrative change. Its legacy survives in some archival records and in memories of the period, while modern local government arrangements reflect a return to more historically familiar boundaries.