Counties of England
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50 free Counties of England trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
England's counties go back more than a thousand years, and every one has a personality: a nickname, an emblem, a famous landmark, a food or a legend it is proud of. The map has also been redrawn more than once, so the historic shires and today's ceremonial counties do not always match. This quiz covers both. You will be asked to place stone circles, royal castles, national parks, cathedral cities and seaside resorts in the right county, to match counties with their flags, abbreviations and nicknames, and to remember the counties that were created in the 1970s or disappeared altogether. It suits pub quiz teams, geography students, family road trips and anyone who has ever argued about where one county ends and the next begins. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up a few stories along the way.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which county's orchards and hop gardens earned it the nickname the Garden of England?
Kent
Kent meets the English Channel at the White Cliffs of Dover, where the chalk ridge of the North Downs reaches the sea.
Q 02Which historic county, the largest in the United Kingdom, was divided for centuries into three ridings?
Yorkshire
Yorkshire's ridings took their name from an Old Norse word meaning a third part, which is why there were exactly three: North, East and West.
Q 03Which law officer's title is a contraction of 'shire reeve', the king's agent in an Anglo-Saxon county?
Sheriff
Sheriff lives on in the high sheriff, an unpaid ceremonial officer still appointed each year for every county.
Q 04Which English county shares a land border with only one other county and flies St Piran's black-and-white flag?
Cornwall
Cornwall's flag honours St Piran, its patron saint, and the white cross on black is said to recall white tin against black ore.
Q 05Which landlocked county, the smallest of England's historic counties, takes a horseshoe as its emblem?
Rutland
Rutland keeps a curious custom: royalty and peers passing through Oakham must present a horseshoe to the Lord of the Manor, and more than 200 now hang in Oakham Castle.
Q 06Which county's Salisbury Plain holds the stone circle of Stonehenge and a large British Army training area?
Wiltshire
Wiltshire also holds the Avebury stone circle, and the two monuments together form a single UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 07Which county contains Sherwood Forest, the legendary hideout of the outlaw Robin Hood?
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Forest is known for the Major Oak, a vast tree named after Major Hayman Rooke, the antiquarian who described it in 1790.
Q 08Which county contains both Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain, and Windermere, its longest and largest lake?
Cumbria
Cumbria is younger than it looks: the county was only created in 1974, by merging two historic counties with pieces of two others.
Q 09Which county, home to the seaside resort of Blackpool, takes a red rose as its emblem?
Lancashire
Lancashire's red rose began as the badge of the royal House of Lancaster in the 14th century and now appears on the county's flag.
Q 10Which county holds most of the Broads, a network of lakes formed by flooded peat workings?
Norfolk
Norfolk holds most of the 303-square-kilometre Broads, which have over 200 kilometres of navigable waterways and protection similar to a national park.
Q 11Which county hosts the Glastonbury Festival and holds Cheddar Gorge in its Mendip Hills?
Somerset
Somerset's Cheddar Gorge is where Cheddar Man, Britain's oldest near-complete human skeleton, was found in a cave in 1903.
Q 12Which county was the home of novelist Thomas Hardy and holds the natural arch of Durdle Door?
Dorset
Dorset became South Wessex in Hardy's novels, and most of its shoreline belongs to the Jurassic Coast, England's first natural World Heritage Site.
Q 13Which county, England's northernmost and least densely populated, has more castles than any other?
Northumberland
Northumberland's castles, among them Alnwick and Bamburgh, are the legacy of centuries as contested border country between England and Scotland.
Q 21Which county bordering Wales has the old name Salop, so that its residents are still called Salopians?
Shropshire
Shropshire's Coalbrookdale area is regarded as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 22Which county is known for Melton Mowbray pork pies and was the site of the Battle of Bosworth Field?
Leicestershire
Leicestershire takes a fox as its emblem, because tradition regards the county as the birthplace of fox hunting as it is known today.
Q 23Which county holds Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon royal ship burial whose excavation inspired the film The Dig?
Suffolk
Suffolk's great ship burial is probably that of the East Anglian king Rædwald, and its treasures included a helmet, a sword of state and a lyre.
Q 14Which is the only English county with two separate coastlines, on the Bristol Channel and the English Channel?
Devon
Devon also holds all of Dartmoor and part of Exmoor, two upland national parks that are the source of most of its rivers.
Q 15Which county, whose flag shows a bear and ragged staff, was the birthplace of William Shakespeare?
Warwickshire
Warwickshire also produced the novelist George Eliot, who was born Mary Ann Evans just outside Nuneaton in 1819.
Q 16Which county contains most of the Peak District and has Kinder Scout as its highest point?
Derbyshire
Derbyshire's uplands made history in 1951, when the Peak District became the United Kingdom's first national park.
Q 17Which county contains the Potteries, the six towns that merged to form Stoke-on-Trent?
Staffordshire
Staffordshire also yielded the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found in Britain, unearthed in a field near Lichfield in 2009.
Q 18Which county, abbreviated to Hants, contains the New Forest and the cathedral city of Winchester?
Hampshire
Hampshire's short form comes from Hantescire, the spelling of the county's name recorded in the Domesday Book.
Q 19Which county, whose flag shows three Saxon swords called seaxes, contains Colchester, Britain's oldest recorded town?
Essex
Essex takes its name from the Old English for East Saxons, the eastern kingdom of the settlers who had crossed from the continent.
Q 20By what collective name, first recorded in 1695, are London's neighbouring shires known?
The Home Counties
The Home Counties may owe their name to the Home Circuit, the group of law courts that once surrounded London, though the origin is uncertain.
Q 24Which county contains most of the Cotswolds along with the Royal Forest of Dean?
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire also stages the annual race at Cooper's Hill, where competitors chase a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a slope of around 50 percent.
Q 25Which county is officially styled a Royal County because Windsor Castle stands within it?
Berkshire
Berkshire's Windsor Castle was built after the Norman Conquest and went on to become the official country residence of the British monarch.
Q 26Which county, the second largest in England, gives its natives the nickname Yellowbellies?
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire's nickname has several rival explanations, from yellow facings on the old Lincolnshire Regiment's uniform to a yellow-bellied creature of the Fens, and its origin is disputed.
Q 27Which county was governed for centuries by Prince-Bishops with the right to raise armies and mint coins?
Durham
Durham's bishops ran it as a county palatine outside the usual system, which helps explain why it is the only English county commonly given the prefix County.
Q 28Which historic county, the second smallest in England, was almost entirely absorbed into Greater London in 1965?
Middlesex
Middlesex outlived its own abolition in the post: Royal Mail kept it as a postal county in 1965 because amending addresses across Outer London would have cost too much.
Q 29Which island county, separated from the mainland by the Solent, holds Queen Victoria's summer home, Osborne House?
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is England's largest island at 380 square kilometres, and Osborne House at East Cowes was also Queen Victoria's final home.
Q 30Which office holder is the monarch's personal representative in each ceremonial county of England?
Lord-Lieutenant
The Lord-Lieutenant began as a military post: Henry VIII appointed the earliest ones in the 1540s, and they stayed in charge of each county's militia until 1871.