Shropshire

From 1457, King Henry VI created for his son, Prince Edward, a Council to rule Wales and the Marches, Cheshire, and Cornwall, which became the Council of the Marches. Shropshire was governed via this council for several centuries. According to historian John Davies, at its peak under Sir Henry Sidney and for a period thereafter the Council: <blockquote>represented a remarkable experiment in regional government. It administered the law cheaply and rapidly; it dealt with up to twenty cases a day and George Owen stated that the 'oppressed poor' flocked to it.</blockquote>

The first known architectural project of Inigo Jones is the Cotton monument in the Church of St Chad, Norton-in-Hales. There are a number of important buildings in the county. The world's first iron-framed building was built in Shrewsbury at the Flaxmill Maltings: the techniques pioneered in that building were necessary preconditions for skyscrapers. Nash and Repton were active at Attingham Park. A rare Anglo-Saxon hall, which was a high status building from the Anglo Saxon period, and possibly a feasting hall or palace, was excavated at nearby Attingham in 2018; the dating window is between 400 AD and 1066.

Shropshire was the native county and rural seat of power of Sir Rowland Hill, who coordinated and published the 1560 Geneva Bible. This important Bible was the senior Bible of English Protestantism for the early decades of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement.