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Yorkshire, by far England's largest county, has for centuries been divided (pre-1974) into four administrative areas, the East, North and West Ridings and the city (or "Ainsty" of York. This page is concerend only with the West Riding, the largest in both area and population. It extends from Sedbergh in the west to Doncaster and Goole in the east and from Ripon in the north to Sheffield in the south. The West Riding includes three of England's biggest ten cities in Sheffield (5th), Leeds (6th) and Bradford (10th), yet also includes the wild, uninhabitable moorland of the middle section of the Pennines in its western half. It is bordered by (not surprisingly) the North Riding to the north, the City of York and the East Riding to the north-east, Lincolnshire to the east, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to the south and Lancashire to the west.
The western half of the Riding is mostly sparsely populated moorland split by a series of valleys (known as the "Dales") and traditionally home to thousands of sheep whose wool was passed down the valleys to the centre of the Riding, where wool processing and clothing manufacture built the great cities and numerous towns of that region, including both Bradford and Leeds. The woollen industry used the numerous rivers for both power and to cleanse the wool, and later the nearby coal to take over the supply of power. The south-east corner of the Riding became one of the country's major centres for mining of both coal and metals and for the manufacture of iron and steel, which industries led to the growth of Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and several smaller towns. The north-eastern part of the Riding is a part of the extensive Plain of York, and fertile area of low flat land, formerly swamp but drained long ago for arable crops and cattle.
[To be completed - any additional information welcome]
[To be completed - any additional information welcome]
The UK Genealogy Interests Directory, a new and growing facility, has a page of surname interests in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Yorkshire West Riding Lookup Exchange is a list of volunteers willing to do free lookups, as and when they have time, in resources they happen to have available to them.
There is a mailing list for West Riding researchers. To subscribe send a message containing just the word:
subscribe
to West Riding mailing list subscribe.
Looking4kin offers free membership of a chat room for Yorkshire researchers, as well as similar resources for other areas.
However, for completeness sake, if the place meets the first criterion but fails on one or more of the others, then it will at least appear here as a heading, so the reader will have some idea which places may "get the treatment" at some time in the future.
 View of Hinchcliffe Mill hamlet |  Mill pond from bridge, Hinchcliffe Mill |
This is a hamlet within the chapelry of Holmfirth. My interest in the place is that my wife's great grandmother Phoebe Cole was born here in 1835.
My interest here is that my wife's great great grandparents Humphrey Cole and Elizabeth Cotterill were married here in 1834.
There is a mailing list for Sheffield researchers. To subscribe send a message containing just the word:
subscribe
to Sheffield mailing list subscribe.
C.R.J Currie and C.P.Lewis A Guide to English County Histories (Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1994), ISBN 0-7509-1505-6.
A. Room: Dictionary of British Place Names (1988), ISBN 1 85605 1775.
A.D. Mills: A Dictionary of English Place-Names (Oxford University Press, 1991, revised 1995), ISBN 0-19-869156-4.
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