317 articles
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury, county town of Shropshire, England, is a market town of about 77,000 people in a loop of the River Severn near the Welsh border, first recorded in 901, wealthy on the medieval wool trade, site of the 1403 battle and the world's first iron-framed building.
Sittingbourne
Sittingbourne is a town in Swale, Kent, England, on Milton Creek beside Roman Watling Street (A2). Known as a pilgrim and coaching stop, then for brickmaking (Smeed Dean) and Edward Lloyd's newsprint mill, closed 2007.
Skegness
Skegness is a Lincolnshire seaside resort on the North Sea coast, developed as a planned Victorian resort by the ninth Earl of Scarbrough after the 1873 railway, later home to Butlin's amusements.
Slough
Slough, England, is a Berkshire town about 20 miles west of central London, known for the Slough Trading Estate, the largest business park in Europe under single ownership.
Solihull
Solihull is a West Midlands town and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, England. Founded as a late 12th-century planted borough near the Domesday manors of Ulverlei and Longdon, it became a Birmingham commuter town; borough population 216,200 (2021).
South Shields
South Shields is a coastal town in Tyne and Wear, England, at the mouth of the River Tyne; Roman Arbeia, medieval Caer Urfa, a coal, salt and shipbuilding town of about 73,000 people, home of Catherine Cookson and the Shields Ferry.
Southampton
Southampton, England's south-coast unitary-authority port city (pop. ~259,000), home to the UK's busiest cruise terminal and second largest container port, shaped by Titanic, Blitz and D-Day history and 2026–2028 devolution.
Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea is a city and unitary authority in Essex on the Thames Estuary, about 40 miles from London. Known for the world's longest pleasure pier (1.34 miles) and city status granted in 2022 honoring Sir David Amess; population about 180,700.
Southport
Southport is a seaside resort in Sefton, Merseyside, England, founded in 1792 by William Sutton. Known for Lord Street, the 1860 Southport Pier (Britain's second longest, closed since 2022), Victorian parks, and the Sefton Coast dunes.
St Albans
St Albans, Hertfordshire cathedral city on the site of Roman Verulamium, burial place of Saint Alban; city status 1877, about 148,200 district population, 21-minute London commute, and among England's priciest commuter cities.
St Helens, Merseyside
St Helens, Merseyside: a Liverpool City Region metropolitan borough of about 183,200 people, historically built on glassmaking (from 1773) and coal, now undergoing major town centre regeneration while ranking among England's more deprived areas.
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives (Cornish: Porth Ia) is a Cornish seaside town and former pilchard and tin port, famed for its beaches, the Tate St Ives gallery, the Barbara Hepworth Museum, the 1887 St Erth branch line, and acute second-home housing pressure.
Stafford
Stafford is the county town of Staffordshire, England, founded as an Anglo-Saxon burh in 913 AD by Aethelflaed and chartered by King John in 1206; a market and former shoemaking town of about 136,900 people (2021 borough population) now undergoing major town-centre regeneration.
Staines-upon-Thames
Staines-upon-Thames, formerly Staines, is a market town in Spelthorne, Surrey, on the Thames. Roman Ad Pontes/Pontibus at the London–Silchester road crossing; Domesday Stanes; renamed Staines-upon-Thames in 2012.
Stamford, Lincolnshire
Stamford, Lincolnshire: a market town on the River Welland in South Kesteven, designated England's first conservation area on 28 September 1967, with over 600 listed buildings, five medieval churches, and Georgian architecture from its Great North Road coaching heyday.
Stevenage
Stevenage, Hertfordshire town and borough about 30 miles north of London; Britain's first post-war new town, designated under the New Towns Act 1946 with a pioneering fully pedestrian town centre; population about 89,500 in 2021.
Steyning
Steyning is a historic market town in Horsham District, West Sussex, at the foot of the South Downs. Known for its Norman church of St Andrew and St Cuthman, its market dating to Edward the Confessor, and its 1771 rebuilt Market House at 72 High Street.
Stockport
Stockport, a town in Greater Manchester, England, on a red sandstone promontory over the River Mersey. Saxon origins, 1220 mayoral charter, 1840 brick viaduct, County Borough 1888, Metropolitan Borough 1974, major town centre regeneration since 2019.
Stockton-on-Tees
Stockton-on-Tees is a market town and administrative center in north east England, divided by the River Tees, known for its wide High Street market chartered in 1310.
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent, the Potteries, is a West Midlands unitary city federated from six pottery towns in 1910 (city status 1925), with about 258,400 residents, a declining ceramics industry, and contested regeneration.
Stonea
Stonea, Cambridgeshire: fen island near March holding Stonea Camp, Britain's lowest hillfort at 2 m OD, an Iron Age multivallate fort of the Iceni with a nearby Roman stone building and tower.
Stourbridge
Stourbridge is a West Midlands town in Dudley borough, England, famed for 400 years of glassmaking, the Red House Glass Cone, town centre regeneration, and the August 2026 wildfire.
Stow-on-the-Wold
Stow-on-the-Wold: hilltop Cotswold market town in Gloucestershire, England, about 2,000 people, the highest Cotswold town at 800 feet on the Fosse Way, known for its wool-trade square, the 1646 Battle of Stow, and St Edward's Church yew door.
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon: Warwickshire market town on the River Avon, chartered 1196, birthplace and burial place of William Shakespeare; major heritage tourism center with about 2.5 million annual visitors.
Stroud
Stroud is a Cotswold market town in Gloucestershire, England, once the center of a woollen cloth industry producing cloth known as Strouds, served by the 1779 Stroudwater Canal, and named the Sunday Times best place to live in the UK in 2021.
Sunderland
Sunderland: coastal city and metropolitan borough on the River Wear, Tyne and Wear, England; former world shipbuilding capital (Mackem identity), city status 1992, now built around Nissan's plant, AESC gigafactory and Riverside Sunderland regeneration.
Sutton Coldfield
Royal Sutton Coldfield: town in north east Birmingham, England, chartered by Henry VIII in 1528 via Bishop Vesey, absorbed into Birmingham in 1974, home to 900-hectare Sutton Park and a £20 million Pride in Place regeneration programme.
Sutton-in-Ashfield
Sutton-in-Ashfield, a market and industrial town in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire; largest of the district's three town centres. Known for hosiery and coal mining, population 14,866 in 1901.
Sutton, England
Sutton, south-west London: administrative centre of the London Borough of Sutton in former Surrey. Population about 209,600 (2021), a London Plan Opportunity Area with 5,000 homes and 3,500 jobs planned by 2041.
Swadlincote
Swadlincote: market town and largest settlement of South Derbyshire, England, near the Leicestershire and Staffordshire borders. Former coal and clay town famed for sanitary ware (Sharpe's Pottery, 1821); now the district's administrative center at the heart of The National Forest.