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County town   /kˈaʊnti taʊn/   Listen
County town

noun
1.
The town or city that is the seat of government for a shire.  Synonym: shire town.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"County town" Quotes from Famous Books



... with her impudent flaming tongue. The women hate her, and she pays them out as she only can. Lady Maddon had fits for an hour, after an encounter with her, in their meeting by chance one day at a mercer's in the county town. She has the wit of a young she-devil and the temper of a tigress, and is so tall, and towers so that she frightens them out ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... morning after the marriage was passed in tears on her side, and oaths, curses, and revilings on his. The lady, however, appeared the more sensible party of the two. Their marriage was not known, she had run away on a pretence to visit a relative, and it was actually supposed in the county town where she resided, that such was the case. 'Why should we quarrel in this way?' observed she. 'You, Edmund, wished to marry a fortune, and not me—I may plead guilty to the same duplicity. We have made a mistake; but it is not too late. It is supposed that I am on a visit ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... many people still called her—was moving restlessly about her big bare house that morning. Her husband had left for the county town before his wife was out of bed—her lateness in rising was one of the many things the Ericson family had against her. Clara seldom came downstairs before eight o'clock, and this morning she was even later, for she had dressed with unusual ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... necessary for Terry to be back in barracks next day. He had gone off after breakfast with Major Evelyn and Mr. Earnshaw, forbidding her to come to see him off. Sir Shawn, who was High Sheriff for the year and had to be in the county town for the opening of the Assizes, took the party to the station on his way. She was left with the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... experiments for myself. The result of this activity was that I had soon written enough verse to make a little pamphlet. With this pamphlet in my pocket and without consultation with anybody—the young of the poets are as shy as the young of the salmon—I trudged off to Wells, the county town, five miles distant across Mendip. How I discovered the name of the local printer I do not know, but I did discover it, and with beating heart approached his doors. After swearing him to secrecy, I ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... the sections were nearly all settled upon, for in that direction lay the county town, but to the north and on into Minnesota rolled the unplowed sod, the feeding ground of the cattle, the home of foxes and wolves, and to the west, just beyond the highest ridges, we loved to think the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... opposed the project, and succeeded in forcing the promoters, in their survey of the line, to pass the town at a distance. When the first railway through Kent was projected, the line was laid out so as to pass by Maidstone, the county town. But it had not a single supporter amongst the townspeople, whilst the landowners for many miles round combined to oppose it. In like manner, the line projected from London to Bristol was strongly denounced by the inhabitants of the intermediate districts; and when ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... death of this youth, John Parcel had occasion to go to Dublin, to transact some business with the Rev. Dr. Turbot, and on his way to the metropolis he was obliged to stop for more than an hour at the county town, to await the arrival of the mail-coach. As he lingered about the door of the coach-office, he noticed a crowd of persons corning down the street, bearing something that resembled a human figure on a beir. It was evidently the corpse ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Ann Lewis, was a maiden lady, living at Porthstone, in Mynyddshire, a quiet little seaside place about twenty miles from the county town, Abertaff. ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... arrived when Edward Nicholas is to be tried for his life on the charge of high treason. Within a fortnight after his surrender, a Special Commission was sent down to try him; and the trial is to take place at the county town of Dolgelly.[1] At an early hour, Bertram, who had slept in Dolgelly, presented himself at the door of the court-house: early as it was, however, he found the entrance already thronged by a crowd unusually numerous ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... heard that Uncle Jap was frequenting saloons, hanging about the hotels in the county town, hunting, of course, for a capitalist who would bore for oil on shares, seeking the "angel" with the dollars who would transport him and his Lily into the empyrean of millionaires. When he confided as much to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... carriage thundered under the archway of the courtyard, by the din of the gong as it gave notice of luncheon and dinner. The measured tramp of soldiery which I sometimes heard—for my father's house lay near a county town where there were large barracks—made me sob and tremble; and yet when they were gone past, I longed for ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... of interest as we entered this miniature county town was a lofty monument fifty or sixty feet high,[Footnote: This monument has since been swept away.] which stood in a separate enclosure near a graveyard attached to a church. It was evidently very old, and leaning several points from the perpendicular, and was bound together almost to the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... fortnight was near at an end, and nothing had been done, he went again over to Salisbury. It was quite true that he had business there, as a gentleman almost always does have business in the county town where his banker lives, whence tradesmen supply him, and in which he belongs to some club. And our Vicar, too, was a man fond of seeing his bishop, and one who loved to move about in the precincts of the cathedral, to shake hands with the dean, and to have a little subrisive fling at Mr. Chamberlaine, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... have arrived. The weather has been talked over for the last time (for the present); a harp, violin, and a cornet-a-piston from the county town, influenced by the spirit of gin-and-water, are heard discoursing most eloquent music in the dining-room, which has been cleared out for the dance. Miss Patty Honeywood, accepting the offer of Mr. Verdant Green's arm, swims joyously out of the room; other ladies and gentlemen ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... account for every minute between nine and ten o'clock," answered Brereton. "It would be no good, for instance, if we proved to a jury that from say ten o'clock until five o'clock next morning, Harborough was at—shall we say your county town, Norcaster. You may say it would take Harborough an hour to get from here to Norcaster, and an hour to return, and that would account for his whereabouts between nine and ten last night, and between five and six this morning. That wouldn't do—because, according to ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... usual course there, in which I was not unsuccessful, I took Holy Orders and became a curate. When I was about eight-and- twenty I was presented with a College living in the village of A. about four miles from the county town of B. in the West of England. My parishioners were the squire, a half-pay captain in the army, a retired custom-house surveyor who was supposed to be the illegitimate son of a member of parliament, and the surrounding ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... been held, the prisoners were removed to the county town, some miles distant, where they were placed in confinement, awaiting the day of trial, which would not take place ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... that good landlord, and friend of all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and indefatigable visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers of his shire, so full of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at agricultural shows, and even lectures at county town institutes in his modest, pleasant way, was the wild young Lord Kew of a quarter of a century back; who kept racehorses, patronised boxers, fought a duel, thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at Crockford's, and did who ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... lucidity, "where they shut people up. Sometimes there's an execution. But not often; not very often; once in a while, as you might say. There's a monument, too,—upon a hill they call the Beacon. I'm very fond of Bodmin. It's the County Town, you know; and with these little things going on, in one way and another, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... Albert died, Mary Erskine went one day in a wagon, taking the baby with her, and Thomas to drive, to the county town, where the Probate ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott

... until little Madaline reached her third year, then he would tell him his secret; the child would be pretty and graceful—she would, in all probability, win his love. He could not let it go on longer than that. Madaline could not remain unknown and uncared for in that little county town; it was not to be thought of. Therefore, if his father lived, and all went well, he would tell his story then; if, on the contrary, his health failed, then he would keep his secret altogether, and his father would never know that he had ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... a long village, neatly and chiefly built of wood, fifty three miles from Hamilton. It is the county town of the Brock district; and here numbers of gentlemen of small fortunes have settled themselves from England and Ireland. It is a thriving place, and their cottages and country houses are chiefly built, and their grounds laid out, in the English ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... the wagon of a travelling photographer. Their metropolitan hotel is the stoop and bar-room of the 'Uncas House.' Their university is the unpainted school-house on the hill. Their literature is the weekly newspaper from the county town. But take the majority of educated men even. What a rusty, small kind of existence they lead! They are in a rut, just the same as the others, only the rut is a trifle wider. If I had my way I would never do the same work or talk with the same people—hardly live in the same place for two days ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... a wonderful change in Excelsior,—wonderful even in that land of rapid growth and progress. Their organized and matured plans, executed by a full force of workmen from the county town, completed the twenty cottages for the members, the bank, and the town hall. Visitors and intending settlers flocked over the new wagon road to see this new Utopia, whose founders, holding the land and its improvements ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... the case are, that in Crittenden County, Arkansas, of which Marion is the county town, the population is chiefly colored, the ratio being seven negroes to one white man. For several years the office of Judge of the County and Probate Court, and the Clerk and under officers of the court, were colored men. The more important county offices were held by white men. ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various

... municipal borough, and the county town of Essex, England, in the Chelmsford parliamentary division, 30 m. E.N.E. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 12,580. It is situated in the valley of the Chelmer, at the confluence of the Cann, and has communication by the river with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... singular extravagance when, one day, a photographer was brought over from the county town and photographed them standing, all seven, in the shadow of an old apple tree with the grey lichen on the raddled trunk. But it wasn't ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... Clotelle; and she felt a secret joy at seeing all the servants in the Greenville hotel negroes. She saw from their very looks that she had their undivided sympathies. One of the servants overheard the rebels in a conversation, in which it was determined to send Clotelle to the county town, for safe keeping in the jail, the following day; and this fact was communicated to the unfortunate woman. The slave woman who gave the information told her that she could escape ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown



Words linked to "County town" :   United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, UK, shire town, U.K., Great Britain, United Kingdom, seat, shire, Britain



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