The Mappa Mundi, the Hereford Herd, and the deepest English countryside
Hereford is a cathedral city in the Welsh Marches containing one of the greatest treasures of medieval cartography — the Mappa Mundi (c.1300), the world's largest surviving medieval map, housed in the cathedral alongside the Chained Library (the largest surviving in the world). The city is the heart of cider country, Hereford cattle territory, and the gateway to the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons.
Hereford was a frontier city for much of its history — established as a Saxon town to guard the Welsh border, it was repeatedly attacked and sacked by Welsh princes. The cathedral, begun in the 1070s, preserves the Mappa Mundi alongside 1,500 books in the Chained Library dating from the 8th century, all still chained to their original reading shelves as they were in the medieval period. The black-and-white Herefordshire architectural tradition — timber-framing with lime-washed panels — extends throughout the county.