Middlesex

Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England, a small territory on the north bank of the Thames whose name means the land of the Middle Saxons. It grew out of an early medieval Middle Saxon province linked to the Kingdom of Essex and was probably recognised as a county in the tenth century. Its boundaries were largely natural: the Thames to the south, the River Lea to the east, the River Colne to the west and a line of hills toward Hertfordshire in the north. It was the second smallest historic county after Rutland. The City of London and Westminster lay within or beside it, and the southeastern part filled with the growing capital from the eighteenth century, so that in 1889 about a fifth of its area became the new administrative County of London. The rest stayed an administrative county until 1965, when almost all of it was absorbed into Greater London, with small parts going to Hertfordshire and Surrey. Sporting associations still use the Middlesex name as a geographic frame of reference.