Kent
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Kent is a county in the South East England region, the closest county to continental Europe. It borders Essex across the entire estuary of the River Thames to the north; the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover to the south-east; East Sussex to the south-west; Surrey to the west and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone.
Image: White Cliffs of Dover, Kent
Image: Saint Thomas Becket (Samuel Caldwell, 1919) crop
An early mention of Kent in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between 11th and 12th centuries
Title page of William Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent (completed in 1570 and published in 1576), a historical description of Kent and the first published county history
Counties of England
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The counties of England are divisions of England. Counties have been used as administrative areas in England since Anglo-Saxon times. There are two main legal definitions of the counties in modern usage: the 84 counties for the purposes of local government, and the 48 counties for the purposes of lieutenancy, also termed the ceremonial counties.
Many counties had a central courthouse from which they were administered, which often became the first meeting place for the county councils created in 1889, such as Shire Hall, Stafford.
County flags at Parliament Square, opposite the United Kingdom Parliament in Westminster, London