West Riding

The term West Riding usually refers to the West Riding of Yorkshire in England, though Lindsey also possessed a West Riding.

Yorkshire's West Riding comprised an historical subdivision of the county of Yorkshire, roughly corresponding to its territorial successor West Yorkshire. It had an area of 1,771,562 acres. Of this area the southern industrial district, considered in the broadest application of the term as extending between Sheffield and Skipton, Sheffield and Doncaster, and Leeds and the county boundary, covered rather less than one-half. Within this district we find the centres of Barnsley, Batley, Bradford, Brighouse, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Leeds, Morley, Ossett, Pontefract, Pudsey, Rotherham, Sheffield, Todmorden (partly in Lancashire), and Wakefield. Major centres elsewhere in the riding include Harrogate, and Ripon.

Within the industrial region other urban districts included Bingley, Castleford, Cleckheaton, Elland, Featherstone, Handsworth, Hoyland Nether, Liversedge, Mexborough, Mirfield, Normanton, Rawmarsh, Rothwell, Saddleworth, Shipley, Skipton, Sowerby Bridge, Stanley, Swinton, Thornhill, Wombwell and Worsborough. Outside the industrial region we find Goole, Ilkley, Knaresborough and Selby.

The historic West Riding now lies mostly within the administrative counties of West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, with a significant area in North Yorkshire, and small areas in Lancashire, Cumbria and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Adapted from 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article.