LEOMINSTER, a municipal and parliamentary borough and market-town of England in the county of Hereford, is situated in a rich agricultural country on the Lug, 150 miles west-north-west of London and 12 north of Hereford. The town has regular and spacious streets, and some fine old timber houses lend picturesqueness to its appearance. The parish church, which is of mixed architecture, including the fine Norman nave of the old priory church, and contains some of the most beautiful examples of window tracery in England, was restored in 1866, and enlarged by the addition of a south nave in 1879. The other public buildings are the corn exchange, erected in 1859 at a cost of £4000, and the town-hall, to make room for which, in 1855, the Butter Cross, a beautiful example of old timber work of the date 1663, was removed to form a private dwelling house. The principal industries of the town are leather and woollen manufactures, iron and brass founding, glove and hat making, and the manufacture of agricultural implements. Leominster originated in a monastery founded by Merwald king of Mercia, who had a castle near the town, where a fortress stood till 1055, when it was demolished by the Welsh. The town received a charter of incorporation from Queen Mary, and has sent members to Parliament since the 23d of Edward I.; in 1868 its representation was reduced from two members to one. The limits of the municipal and the parliamentary boroughs are identical, the population in 1871 being 5863, which in 1881 had increased to 6042.

See the Histories by Price (1795) and Townsend (1863), and a paper by E. A. Freeman in Archaeologia Gambrensis, 1853.