HERFORD, a town in the Prussian province of Westphalia, situated at the confluence of the Werre and Aa, on the Minden and Cologne railway, 9 m. N.E. of Bielefeld, and at the junction of the railway to Detmold. Pop. It owes its origin to a Benedictine nunnery, said to have been founded in 832, and confirmed by the emperor Louis the Pious in 839. From the em peror Frederick I. the abbess obtained princely rank and a seat in the imperial diet. The foundation was secularized in 1803. Her ford was a member of the Hanseatic League, and in 1631 it became a free imperial town, but in 1647 it was subjugated by the elector of Brandenburg. It came into the possession of Westphalia in 1807, and in 1813 into that of Prussia.
rIerf ord possesses a gymnasium founded in 154o, while its churches include the Miinsterkirche, a Romanesque building with a Gothic apse of the 15th century and the Marienkirche, in the Gothic style. The industries include cotton and flax-spinning, and the manufacture of linen cloth, carpets, furniture, machinery, sugar, chocolate, tobacco and margarine.