Monmouthshire is the southeasternmost county in Wales, centred on the city of Newport, and covers approximately the same area as the former county of Gwent. The name Monmouthshire has been used to refer to various different boundaries at different points in time: at present, for example, it is used by the Monmouthshire local authority to cover just the rural areas that they administer. Historically, Monmouthshire was a much wider area, from the eastern edge of Cardiff to Chepstow, north to Monmouth, and west to beyond Abergavenny, and it is this area that these pages cover, as shown on the map. For those of you familiar with the “vice-county” system, devised in Victorian times by H. C. Watson, and still used for nature recording today, Monmouthshire is vice-county 35.