The Vice County Of Staffordshire

The County boundaries of Staffordshire The black outline indicates the Vice-county (39) boundary whilst the grey area shows the current extent of Staffordshire. Notable places in Staffordshire are indicated, those in Italics are no longer in the modern county.

In order to maintain continuity of recording area and to help put historical records into context, this publication covers the boundary of Staffordshire as it was in 1852 and as it was prior to the changes of 1974.

Staffordshire (VC39) is situated in the West Midlands to the north of the centre of England and covers 3,056 square kilometres. Its greatest length from north to south is about fifty-six miles (c90km) and its extreme width from east to west is nearly thirty-eight miles (c60km) (Emley & Warren 2001). VC39 includes the County of Staffordshire, and parts of the Metropolitan Borough Councils of Walsall, Wolverhampton and Dudley.

Staffordshire has three well-defined physical regions: the northern hills, the central plain and the southern plateau. The hill country is dissected by a series of parallel rivers which flow from north-west to south-east directly into the Trent or into the Dove, which joins the Trent on the Derbyshire border. The central plain is a low lying tract of land watered by the River Trent, which rises on the moors near Biddulph and sweeps eastwards in a great curve. The southern plateau protrudes like a wedge into the central plain and rises to its highest point on Cannock Chase. The topography is such that nearly the whole of Staffordshire is in the catchment area of the Trent. The exception is the south-west of the county which is in the Severn catchment (Webb et al 1998).

This publication is actually the fourth checklist of aculeate hymenoptera for the County (fifth if you include the Victoria County History although this was almost exclusively based on Jourdain's list of 1908). In order, these have been; Jourdain (1908), Daltry (1938/39), Emley (1987). Despite these three other lists there are still some huge gaps in the areas which have been recorded.