At the Shropshire county in the West Midlands of England, on the border with Wales

“Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!”– William Shakespeare
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(in Shropshire, a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England, on the border with Wales.) It is bordered by Cheshire to the northeast, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the southeast, Herefordshire to the south, and the Welsh principal areas of Powys and Wrexham to the west and northwest respectively. Telford in the east and Shrewsbury in the center are the largest towns.

+ Shropshire is otherwise rural, and contains market towns such as Oswestry in the northwest, Market Drayton in the northeast, Bridgnorth in the southeast, and Ludlow in the south. The southwest and far west of the county are upland. The Shropshire Hills occupy most of the southwest and include the Stiperstones, Clee Hills, Long Mynd plateau, and the Wenlock Edge escarpment. Together with the Wrekin, which stands isolated to the west of Telford, they have been designated a national landscape. To their west is the upland Clun Forest, and in the far northwest of the county are the Oswestry uplands. The north of the county is a plain, and the far north contains Wixall Moss, part of a national nature reserve. The southeast is a sandstone plateau which forms part of the catchment of the Severn, the county's major river; it enters Shropshire in the west and flows through Shrewsbury before turning southeast and exiting into Worcestershire south of Bridgnorth. During the Anglo-Saxon era, the area was part of Mercia. During the High Middle Ages the county was part of the Welsh Marches, the border region between Wales and England; from 1472 to 1689 Ludlow was the seat of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which administered justice in Wales and Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire. During the English Civil War Shropshire was Royalist, and Charles II fled through the county. The area around Coalbrookdale is regarded as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

+ There is an important Iron Age Hill fort at Old Oswestry earthworks, that has been linked to where King Arthur’s Guinevere was born and called "the Stonehenge of the Iron Age."  After the Roman occupation of Britain ended in the 5th century, the Shropshire area was in the eastern part of the Welsh Kingdom of Powys; known in Welsh poetry as the Paradise of Powys.

+ King Offa of Mercia annexed the entirety of Shropshire over the course of the 8th century from Powys, with Shrewsbury captured in 778, with two dykes built to defend, or at least demarcate it from the Welsh. King Offa converted the palace of the rulers of Powys into his first church, dedicated to St Chad (a foundation that still survives in the town and operated on that initial site for over 1000 years.

+ Many defensive castles were built at this time across the county to defend against the Welsh and enable effective control of the region, including Ludlow Castle and Shrewsbury Castle.