Warwickshire, a west midland county of England, bounded by the counties of Stafford, Derby, Leicester, Northampton, Oxford, Gloucester, and Worcester. It has an extreme length from north to south of 52 miles, an extreme breadth of 33 miles, and an area of 881 sq. m., or 563,946 acres. In the south are spurs of the Cotswolds, as the Edge Hills (826 feet); but elsewhere the surface is varied only by gentle undulations, formerly covered by the Forest of Arden. The Avon, flowing from north-east to south-west towards the Severn, is the principal river; but in the north is the Tame, a tributary of the Trent. New red sandstone is the chief formation, with lias to the south; and a coalfield, 16 miles by 3, extends from near Coventry to the Staffordshire boundary east of Tamworth. The output of coal in 1890 was 1,744,174 tons; and Warwickshire also produces some fireclay, ironstone, limestone, &c. About seven-eighths of the total area is in crops and permanent pasture; woods and plantations occupy nearly 21,000 acres. The great industries are noticed under Birmingham and Coventry; other towns are Warwick, Rugby, Leamington, Stratford-on-Avon, and Nuneaton. The county, which comprises four hundreds and 256 parishes with parts of seven others, is mainly in the diocese of Worcester. For parliamentary purposes it is divided into four divisions, each returning one member—the north or Tamworth, north-east or Nuneaton, south-west or Stratford-on Avon, and south-east or Rugby. The county councillors number seventy-two. The antiquities include a stone circle (the 'Rollright Stones'), Roman stations and roads, and a wealth of mediæval remains, as Warwick and Kenilworth castles. The battlefield of Edgehill must also be noticed; whilst of Warwickshire worthies may be mentioned Shakespeare, Baskerville, Samuel Butler, David Cox, Drayton, Dugdale, 'George Eliot,' Landor, Dr Parr, and Priestley. Pop. (1801) 206,798; (1841) 401,703; (1881) 737,339; (1891) 805,070.
See Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656; new ed. by W. Thomas, 2 vols. 1730), and later histories by W. Smith (1830), W. West (1830), J. T. Burgess (1876), S. Timmins (1889), and Burgess (1893).