Yorkshire

Yorkshire, in Northern England, was once a county and still holds a powerful regional identity, even though it no longer serves an administrative role. Its name comes from the city of York. The southwest part of the area contains Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Doncaster, and Wakefield. The north and east include the southern section of the Teesside conurbation, while the port city of Hull lies in the southeast. York itself sits near the middle. Yorkshire has a North Sea coastline. The North York Moors are in the northeast, the Vale of Mowbray and the Vale of York occupy the centre, and the west includes part of the Pennines, home to the Yorkshire Dales.

Historically, Yorkshire bordered County Durham to the north, the North Sea to the east, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Cheshire to the south, and Lancashire and Westmorland to the west. It was the largest county by area in the United Kingdom. From the Middle Ages, it was split into smaller administrative units: York became a self-governing county corporate in 1396, and the rest was divided into three ridings—North, East, and West. From 1660, each riding had its own lord-lieutenant, and between 1889 and 1974, the ridings served as administrative counties. A Sheriff of Yorkshire existed until 1974. Today, four modern ceremonial counties—East Riding of Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire—together cover most of the historic county.

Yorkshire Day is celebrated on 1 August, honouring the area’s culture, history, and dialect. Its name is used by institutions such as the Royal Yorkshire Regiment, in sport, and in media. The emblem is a white rose, originally the heraldic badge of the Plantagenet House of York. Yorkshire is sometimes called “God’s own country.” It is represented in sport by Yorkshire County Cricket Club and the Yorkshire Rugby Football Union.

Definitions of Yorkshire vary, including the historic county and the four modern ceremonial counties. Its boundaries were fairly stable from 1182, when it gave western land to Lancashire, until 1889, when administrative counties were created and some borders shifted with County Durham, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire. After 1889, occasional adjustments accommodated growing urban areas, such as in 1934 when Dore and Totley moved from Derbyshire to Yorkshire as Sheffield expanded. Major changes in 1974 split the historic county: most went to North, South, and West Yorkshire; a large eastern part became Humberside; a northeastern area became Cleveland; and rural edges went to County Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester. South Yorkshire also gained areas from Nottinghamshire. Cleveland and Humberside were abolished in 1996, leaving the four ceremonial counties that cover most of the historic area.

The Yorkshire and the Humber region covers a similar area to these four counties, except it excludes parts of North Yorkshire that were in Cleveland and includes North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire (formerly in Humberside). Until 2009, some government powers were devolved to the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly; since then, the region has been used mainly for statistics.

The name Yorkshire means the shire of York. The word “York” likely comes from a Brittonic word meaning “place of yew trees,” supported by the abundance of yew trees in the area and the city’s reputation for bowyers using yew wood. This became Eboracum to the Romans, Eoforwic to the Angles, and Jorvik to the Vikings.

By the late Iron Age, the inhabitants were Brythonic Celts of the Hen Ogledd, split into the Brigantes (in the north and west) and the Parisi (in the East Riding). The Brigantes controlled much of Northern England, and six of their nine towns listed by Ptolemy fall within historic Yorkshire. The Parisi may have been related to the Parisii of Gaul; under Roman rule, their capital was Petuaria (modern Brough) near the Humber. Although the Roman conquest began in AD 43, the Brigantes remained a client kingdom under Queen Cartimandua and her husband Venutius for a time.