Wakefield Leasing

Did You Know?

A couple of famous nursery rhymes orginate from Wakefield, including The Grand Old Duke of York (from the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 when the Duke of York was killed) & Here we go round the Mulbery Bush, from High Security Prison.

Wakefield is 9 miles southeast of Leeds and 28 miles southwest of York on the eastern edge of the Penninesin the lower Calder Valley. The city centre is sited on a low hill on the north bank of the Calder close to a crossing place where it is spanned by a 14th-century, nine-arched, stone bridge and a reinforced concrete bridge built in 1929–1930.

Wakefield was originally the chief locality in a large estate belonging to Edward the Confessorand was still a royal manor in 1086. Shortly afterward it became a baronial holding

About 10 miles east of Wakefield are the atmospheric ruins of Pontefract Castle. In the Middle Ages, it was one of the most important castles in the north of England; King Edward I called it ‘the Key of the North, and Richard II died under mysterious circumstances here.

During the bloody War of the Roses, the Battle of Wakefield (1460) was a calculated attempt by the Lancastrians to eliminate Richard, Duke of York – a rival of Henry VI’s for the throne.

Wakefield is part of the Rhubarb Triangle. Pontefract is also the place to go for liquorice. The town’s long liquorice growing and production heritage is celebrated every year in the Pontefract Liquorice Festival when craft stalls, street performers, music and, of course, liquorice take over the town centre.

Up to 1837 Wakefield relied on wells and springs for its water supply; water from the River Calder was polluted, and various water supply schemes were unsuccessful until reservoirs on the Rishworth Moors and a service reservoir at Ardsley were built providing clean water from 1888

Barnsley Canal were instrumental in the development of Wakefield as an important market for grain and more was sold here than at any other market in the north. Large warehouses were built on the river banks to store grain from Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire to supply the fast-growing population in the West Riding of Yorkshire.