Yorkshire
Yorkshire is an area of Northern England which was historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after the city of York.
The south-west of Yorkshire includes the cities of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Doncaster and Wakefield. The north and east of the county includes the southern part of the Teesside conurbation; the port city of Hull is located in the south-east. York is positioned near the centre of the county. Yorkshire has a coastline on the North Sea. The North York Moors occupy the north-east of the county, and the centre contains the Vale of Mowbray and the Vale of York. The west contains part of the Pennines, which includes the Yorkshire Dales.
The county was historically bordered by 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 by area in the United Kingdom. From the Middle Ages the county was subdivided into smaller administrative areas; the city of York was a self-governing county corporate from 1396, and the rest of the county was divided into three ridings – North, East, and West. From 1660 onwards each riding had its own lord-lieutenant, and between 1889 and 1974 the ridings were administrative counties. There was a Sheriff of Yorkshire until 1974. Yorkshire gives its name to four modern ceremonial counties: East Riding of Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire, which together cover most of the historic county.
Yorkshire Day is observed annually on 1 August and is a celebration of the general culture of Yorkshire, including its history and dialect. Its name is used by several institutions, for example the Royal Yorkshire Regiment of the British Army, in sport, and in the media. The emblem of Yorkshire is a white rose, which was originally the heraldic badge of the Plantagenet royal House of York. The county is sometimes referred to as "God's own country". Yorkshire is represented in sport by Yorkshire County Cricket Club and Yorkshire Rugby Football Union.
Definitions
There are several ways of defining Yorkshire, including the historic county and the group of four modern ceremonial counties. The county boundaries were reasonably stable between 1182, when it ceded western areas to the new county of Lancashire, and 1889 when administrative counties were created, which saw some adjustments to the boundaries with County Durham, Lancashire and Lincolnshire. After 1889 there were occasional adjustments to accommodate urban areas which were developing across county boundaries, such as in 1934 when Dore and Totley were transferred from Derbyshire to Yorkshire on being absorbed into the borough of Sheffield.More significant changes in 1974 saw the historic county divided between several counties. The majority of the area was split between North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, which all kept the Yorkshire name. A large part of the east of the county went to the new county of Humberside, and an area in the north-east went to the new county of Cleveland. Some more rural areas at the edges of the historic county were transferred to County Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester, whilst South Yorkshire also included areas which had been in Nottinghamshire.
Cleveland and Humberside were both abolished in 1996, since when there have been four ceremonial counties with Yorkshire in their names: East Riding of Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, which together cover most of the historic county.
There is a region called Yorkshire and the Humber which covers a similar area to the combined area of the four Yorkshire ceremonial counties, the exceptions being that the region excludes the parts of North Yorkshire which had been in Cleveland, but includes North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire. Until 2009, some government powers in the region were devolved to the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly; since 2009 the region has been used primarily for presentation of statistics.
Etymology
Yorkshire is so named as it is the shire of the city of York, or York's Shire. The word York is believed to have originated from the Brittonic word Eburākon, which means 'place of yew trees'. This theory is supported by the fact that yew trees were once abundant in the area around York, and that the city was known for its skilled bowyers who used yew wood to make their bows. This became Eboracum to the Romans, Eorfowīc to the Angles and then, most famously, Jórvík to the Vikings.History
Ancient–500: Hen Ogledd
Early: Celtic Brigantes and Parisi
By the late Iron Age, the inhabitants of what became Yorkshire were Hen Ogledd Brythonic Celts, who formed separate tribes, the Brigantes and the Parisi. The Brigantes controlled territory that later became all of Northern England and more territory than most Celtic tribes on the island of Great Britain. Six of the nine Brigantian polis described by Claudius Ptolemaeus in the Geographia fall within the historic county.The Parisi, who controlled the area that would become the East Riding, might have been related to the Parisii of Lutetia Parisiorum, Gaul. Under Roman rule, their capital was at Petuaria, close to the Humber Estuary.
43–400s: Britannia Inferior
Although the Roman conquest of Britain began in AD 43, the Brigantes remained in control of their kingdom as a client state of Rome for an extended period, reigned over by the Brigantian monarch Cartimandua and her husband Venutius. Initially, this situation suited both the Romans and the Brigantes, who were known as the most militant tribe in Britain.Disputes between the two rulers, however, culminated in Cartimandua delivering the defeated British warlord Caratacus to Roman authority and her leaving Venutius for his armour bearer, Vellocatus. Cartimandua's positive relationship with the Romans allowed her to maintain control of the kingdom even as Venutius staged a rebellion against her and her Roman allies. On his second attempt, however, during the AD 69 Year of the Four Emperors, Venutius managed to seize control of the Brigantes, leading to the Roman conquest of Yorkshire, under general Petillius Cerialis, in AD 71.
Under Roman rule, the Brigantian tribal centre moved from the large hillfort at Stanwick to a newly built capital, or civitas, at Isurium Brigantum, on the river Ure.
The fortified city of Eboracum was named as capital of Britannia Inferior and joint capital of all Roman Britain. The emperor Septimius Severus ruled the Roman Empire from Eboracum for the two years before his death.
Another emperor, Constantius Chlorus, died in Eboracum during a visit in 306 AD. Thereafter his son Constantine the Great, who became renowned for his acceptance of Christianity, was proclaimed emperor in the city. In the early 5th century, Roman rule ceased with the withdrawal of the last active Roman troops. By this stage, the Western Empire was in intermittent decline.
500s–1000s: Germanic landings
500s–800s: Celtic-Anglo kingdoms of Ebrauc, Elmet, Deira and Northumbria
After the Romans left, small Celtic kingdoms arose in the region, including the kingdoms of Deira to the east, Ebrauc around the north and Elmet to the west. The latter two were successors of land south-west and north-east of the former Brigantia capital.Angles consolidated under Deira, with York as capital. This in turn was grouped with Bernicia, another former Celtic-Brigantes kingdom that was north of the River Tees and had come to be headed by Bamburgh, to form Northumbria. Elmet had remained independent from the Germanic Angles until some time in the early 7th century, when King Edwin of Northumbria expelled its last king, Certic, and annexed the region to his Deira region. The Celts never went away, but were assimilated. This explains the existence of many Celtic placenames in Yorkshire today, such as Kingston upon Hull and Pen-y-ghent.
As well as the Angles and Geats, other settlers included Frisians, Danes, Franks and Huns.
At its greatest extent, Northumbria stretched from the Irish Sea to the North Sea and from Edinburgh down to Hallamshire in the south.
800s–900s: Jórvík
Scandinavian York or Danish/Norwegian York is a term used by historians for the south of Northumbria during the late 9th century and first half of the 10th century, when it was dominated by Norse warrior-kings; in particular, used to refer to York, the city controlled by these kings.Norse monarchy controlled varying amounts of Northumbria from 875 to 954, however the area was invaded and conquered for short periods by England between 927 and 954 before eventually being annexed into England in 954. It was closely associated with the much longer-lived Kingdom of Dublin throughout this period.
An army of Danish Vikings, the Great Heathen Army as its enemies often referred to it, invaded Northumbrian territory in 866 AD. The Danes conquered and assumed what is now York and renamed it Jórvík, making it the capital city of a new Danish kingdom under the same name. The area which this kingdom covered included most of Southern Northumbria, roughly equivalent to the borders of Yorkshire extending further West.
The Danes went on to conquer an even larger area of England that afterwards became known as the Danelaw; but whereas most of the Danelaw was still English land, albeit in submission to Viking overlords, it was in the Kingdom of Jórvík that the only truly Viking territory on mainland Britain was ever established. The Kingdom prospered, taking advantage of the vast trading network of the Viking nations, and established commercial ties with the British Isles, North-West Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Founded by the Dane Halfdan Ragnarsson in 875, ruled for the great part by Danish kings, and populated by the families and subsequent descendants of Danish Vikings, the leadership of the kingdom nonetheless passed into Norwegian hands during its twilight years. Eric Bloodaxe, an ex-king of Norway who was the last independent Viking king of Jórvík, is a particularly noted figure in history, and his bloodthirsty approach towards leadership may have been at least partly responsible for convincing the Danish inhabitants of the region to accept English sovereignty so readily in the years that followed.