Best thing: Boasts an incredible wealth of artists, sculptors, painters, writers and actors
Local food: Dock Pudding (made with dock leaves, nettles, oatmeal, onions and more); Grandma Wild’s award-winning Oaties; Andrew Jones’ pork and apple Figit Pie
Events: World Coal Carrying Championships, Ossett, Wakefield; the Rush Cart Ceremony, Saddleworth, uses about 1,500 reed bundles; Hepworth Feast commemorates the end of the plague in the village; World Dock Pudding Championship, Mytholmroyd
Heroes: Geoffrey Boycott; Alan Titchmarsh; Jeremy Paxman; John Smeaton, the father of civil engineering; Thomas Fairfax, Parliamentarian commander-in-chief; Jilly Cooper
Inventions: In 1888, inventor Louis Le Prince recorded the first moving images on film in Leeds; Percy Shaw patented the reflective catseye in 1934; Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement in 1824; James Henry Atkinson invented a mousetrap called Little Nipper in 1897
Battle: The Battle of Wakefield of 1460 was a crushing Lancastrian victory during the Wars of the Roses. Richard, Duke of York, was killed
What they say: ‘Awaken on all my dear moorlands, The wind in its glory and pride! O call me from valleys and highlands, To walk by the hill-river’s side!’ (Emily Brontë)
Artistic connections: The Brontë sisters; Henry Moore: Alan Bennett; Ted Hughes; J. B. Priestley; David Hockney; Peter O’Toole; James Mason; Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate after Tennyson; Barbara Hepworth
Worst thing: The Last of the Summer Wine is the world’s longest-running sitcom
Industry: In 1884, Michael Marks had a stall at Kirkgate Market in Leeds, which grew until he needed an accountant, Thomas Spencer, and thus was Marks & Spencer born
Houses: Harewood House was Adam’s biggest single commission; the Paine mansion Nostell Priory
England’s counties: West Yorkshire
Thursday, 30 April 2009
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