Yorkshire Pages : England’s North East
Yorkshire is a distinct region in itself forming a vast corner of North Eastern England that was historically the largest county in England. Despite its geographical location in the North East, as far as the compass is concerned (it lies directly across the Pennines from the ‘North West’), Yorkshire is not usually included as part of ‘North East England’.
The England’s North East site includes a number of pages featuring Yorkshire and particularly North and East Yorkshire. There are many historic links between the North East and Yorkshire dating back to the Roman era and later Kingdom of Northumbria. We include pages on Yorkshire for completeness. There is much shared heritage, culture and landscape history between the two regions.
In addition many places in Yorkshire are within easy reach of the North East, for example Wensleydale is as near to Newcastle as Newcastle is to Bamburgh and Swaledale is even nearer, so from a visitors’ point of view or from the interest of days out, it also makes sense but above all, it helps complete the story.
North Yorkshire alone is now the largest county in England in terms of area while Yorkshire as a whole is a vast and varied region of more than three and a half million acres and a population of more than 5.5 million, slightly more than Norway. Indeed, Yorkshire’s population is larger than Wales or Ireland, or New Zealand, or Albania, Lithuania, Estonia, Jamaica or Iceland. It is not far behind Denmark and there are almost as many Yorkshiremen as there are Scots in Scotland. Indeed, more than twenty-eight of the states of America have a population that is smaller than Yorkshire.
Most of Yorkshire’s people live in the south and south-west, in the old West Riding. Here we find many of the region’s largest towns, most of which grew as a result of the historic textile trade. The old West Riding is home to Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Pontefract and Castleford to name but a few, accompanied by Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley and Sheffield in the old mining and steel making districts of the south.
Remarkably, for such a populous region, most of Yorkshire still forms one of the least densely populated corners of the nation. It is home to vast swathes of unspoiled, beautiful countryside, littered only with picturesque villages and genteel towns.
Yorkshire’s smaller places range from solid stone hamlets in the dales, fine brick-built villages and coaching towns in the vales to lovely red-roofed cottages in captivating coastal settlements like Whitby, Staithes and Robin Hood’s Bay that hug the coves of the shore.
We have the refined towns of Harrogate and Ilkley, the stately seaside resorts of Scarborough, Saltburn and Bridlington and the ports of Hull, Goole and Middlesbrough.
Here too are towns of ancient strength, the fortified castle towns of Richmond, Knaresborough and Skipton. There are ancient cathedral, minster and abbey towns like Selby, Howden, Beverley and Ripon and to top it all we have one of the most historic cities in England in the shape of the wonderful City of York.
It is the countryside, though, for which Yorkshire is best known. The beautiful Yorkshire Dales in the Carboniferous Pennines of the west attract visitors from across the land. They come to walk, to stroll, to browse in bookshops or relax with a pint of Yorkshire’s finest ale. They come in search of waterfalls, ruined abbeys, captivating views and literary links.
The abbeys, viewpoints and smaller, more intimate dales of the North York Moors are equally fine in the Jurrassic country to the east. The big difference here is that we have the added bonus of the coast. At Whitby we find it all – the romantic ruins of the abbey, the dale of the Esk emptying its waters into the sea, the seaside scenery, the history and the fish and chips.
At the heart of the Yorkshire region, running through its centre we find the open, flatter country of the Vale of Mowbray in the north and Vale of York in the south. Here the Pennines lie to the west, with the North York Moors to the east, both forming distant, but ever-present backdrops to miles of richly cultivated farmland only broken by leafy, red-brick villages or Georgian coaching towns.
Near Thirsk the vale is almost joined by a third vale, the Vale of Pickering. It lies to the east, beyond the gentle climbs of Coxwold and the Howardian Hills. The Vale of Pickering slides neatly and subtly beneath the southern slopes of the North York Moors almost reaching the sea in the form of the marshy Carrs just south of Scarborough. Pickering’s vale plays host to the historic towns of Malton and Norton in the vale, while other towns like Helmsley and Pickering itself, nest on the moor edges of the vale’s northern flank.
The Vale of Pickering is the dividing line between the North York Moors and the more modest hills of the Yorkshire Wolds in the old East Riding to the south. The historic East Riding of Yorkshire corresponds closely to the county known by that name today and it is one of the least-known and most sparsely populated parts of Yorkshire.
Here, heading south-east over the lovely but largely empty wolds, we find Driffield, Beverley, Hull and the region called Holderness near the banks of the Humber between the River Hull and the coast, at the very southern reaches of Yorkshire’s ancient terrain. In the north beyond Holderness, the chalk lands of the Wolds meet the sea at Flamborough Head but to their south is the sweeping bight of Bridlington Bay stretching into Holderness and forming one of the most rapidly eroding coasts in Europe, with many stories of towns and villages long-since lost to the sea.
Inland, much of the East Riding around the Wolds was the original heartland of Deira, the homeland of St Edwin, the King of Northumbria, and was a region that played such an important role in the history and formation of the broader North East, following its unification with Bernicia. It is worth remembering that Northumberland, the border county in the far north east corner of England beyond the Tyne ultimately takes its name from the River Humber.
At the most easterly point in Yorkshire we arrive at Spurn Head, the little curving finger of Yorkshire’s great welcoming hand, where Yorkshire battles with the sea to keep possession of this very tiniest stretch of Yorkshire land at the most southerly point on the Yorkshire coast.
If you live in Yorkshire I hope that you will enjoy finding out more about the fascinating region in which you live and if you don’t, well hopefully you’ll nurture a desire to explore a region that was historically part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, the land north of the Humber.
Yorkshire Pages Links
Cleveland Coast | Cleveland | Middlesbrough
Northallerton and Thirsk | Yarm
Richmond and Swaledale | Wensleydale
Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough