Gloucestershire, a county in south-west England that includes part of the Cotswolds, parts of the flat but fertile valley on the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean.
In addition to Gloucester, other important cities are Cheltenham, Stroud, Cirencester and Tewkesbury. Today's Gloucestershire borders on Monmouthshire in Wales and in England on Herefordshire, South Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Borough of Swindon, Warwickshire and Wiltshire.
The city of Bristol used to belong to Gloucestershire, but since 1373 the city has no longer been included in the county.
Archaeological work accompanying the construction of Britain's HS2 high-speed rail line recently made a rare find: in July, archaeologists from Infra Archaeology extracted the well-preserved figure from a waterlogged Roman ditch in a field in Twyford, Buckinghamshire.