Cheshire is a county in the north-west of England and, although the changes of county boundaries and the introduction of unitary authorities have changed the outline of the county somewhat, the ceremonial county of Cheshire still exists, and shares borders with Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. The north-eastern extremities of Cheshire blur into the ever-expanding sprawl of Greater Manchester, while the north-western fringes of Cheshire merge into Merseyside and onto the Wirral Peninsula.

Cheshire is also one of England’s border counties, and its position on the border with Wales has led to much turbulence over the years, although today Cheshire is largely a peaceful county, with some of its more salubrious areas ranking among the most affluent in the whole of the UK. Yet, although parts of Cheshire have become something of a millionaire’s playground, the county is also full of popular tourist destinations – Cheshire’s county town Chester, for example, is one of the UK’s finest cathedral cities, complete with imposing city walls and examples of architecture that dates back to its earliest days as a Roman settlement. Additionally, there are plenty of days out for the whole family to enjoy around the county, and no shortage of natural, social and industrial history sites to explore. Cheshire also has some beautiful scenery, and is dotted with quaint little towns and villages; the western fringes of the Peak District National Park overlap the Derbyshire and Cheshire border.

Cheshire has, historically, been a rather agricultural county, and the importance of agriculture is still prevalent today. From the earliest days of the Roman occupation of the British Isles until the latter years of the 20th century, however, Cheshire was an important producer of salt – towns with the suffix of ‘wich’ in their names, such as Nantwich and Middlewich for example, grew rapidly as the demand for salt and the rate at which it was produced rose. Cheshire cheese, a friable crumbly cheese that is recognised as being one of the earliest cheeses recorded in history, is another of the county’s most famous exports, and remains one of the more popular cheeses on sale in the UK today.