Facts about Wakefield
General Info
Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 109,766 in the 2021 census, up from 99,251 in the 2011 census. The city is the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield, which had a 2021 population of 353,802, the 25th most populous district in England. It is part of the West Yorkshire Built-up Area and the Yorkshire and The Humber region.
In 1888, it gained city status due to its cathedral. The city has a town hall and is home to the county hall, which was the former administrative centre of the city’s county borough and metropolitan borough as well as county town for the West Riding of Yorkshire.
History
The name Wakefield may derive from “Waca’s field” – the open land belonging to someone named “Waca” or could have evolved from the Old English word wacu, meaning “a watch or wake”, and feld, an open field in which a wake or festival was held. In the Domesday Book of 1086, it was written Wachefeld and also as Wachefelt.
Flint and stone tools and later bronze and iron implements have been found at Lee Moor and Lupset in the Wakefield area showing evidence of human activity since prehistoric times. This part of Yorkshire was home to the Brigantes until the Roman occupation in AD 43. A Roman road from Pontefract passing Streethouse, Heath Common, Ossett Street Side, through Kirklees and on to Manchester crossed the River Calder by a ford at Wakefield near the site of Wakefield Bridge. A large group of coin moulds, the Lingwell Gate coin moulds, representing Romano-British coin forgery were found at Lingwell Gate between 1697 and 1879.
