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For other uses of the word, see Wakefield (disambiguation).
Wakefield is a city in the county of West Yorkshire, England, south of Leeds, and by the River Calder. Its population was 74,764 in 1991. Today it forms part of a metropolitan borough named the City of Wakefield. The town was a centre for cloth dealing and had its own Piece Hall. The cathedral was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott.
Its name is often said to derive from "Wacca's field" -- the field belonging to Wacca. However, it is more likely to have evolved from Old English wacu, meaning "a watch or wake", and feld, an open field in which a wake was held (Reaney, 1964, p.161). In the Domesday Book in 1086, it was listed as Wachefeld (Mills, 1998, p. 361).
Cheapside is the longest continuous street of woolstaplers' warehouses in England. Despite being one of the poorer areas of the country, Wakefield has a very large range of cultural attraction - including an art gallery, a sculpture park, Sandal Castle and a museum. Less celebrated is its prison, which is the most high-security in the whole of Britain.
Wakefield is also distinctive in having had an unusually high amount of council housing, although this led to a situation where, by 2004, the council could no longer keep up with the maintenance of the houses and sold them all off to a housing association. As council housing made up more than a quarter of the Wakefield district, this was the second largest stock transfer in British history. The city of Wakefield itself contains seven council estates and was almost 50% council-rented, whilst the wider Wakefield district also includes nearby towns such as Pontefract, Castleford, Hemsworth and Ossett. The city's largest estate is Lupset, in the west; the others are called Flanshaw, Plumpton, Peacocke, Eastmoor, Portobello and Kettlethorpe.
Wakefield is also known for its mystery plays, a cycle of 32 scriptural plays dating from the early 15th century, which were performed as part of the summertime religious festival of Corpus Christi and revived in recent times.
In 1460, during the Wars of the Roses, the Duke of York was defeated near this city (then a town) in the Battle of Wakefield.
Although Wakefield is not famous for its sport, there are a number of clubs and teams that play in Wakefield. Examples include Wakefield-Emley Football Club, Leeds United FC Reserves, Wakefield Hockey Club and Wakefield Trinity Wildcats.
The film, "This Sporting Life (1963)" is about Wakefield and the hard realities of the mines and Rugby League, directed by Lindsay Anderson, written by David Storey and starring Richard Harris.
Famous people born in or near Wakefield include:
Famous songs regarding Wakefield include:
- "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush" - about Wakefield Gaol
- "Grand old Duke of York" - regarding the battle at Sandal Castle, Wakefield
External links
References
- Mills, A.D. (1998). A dictionary of English place-names (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280074-4.
- Reaney, P.H. (1964). The origin of English place-names (corrected 3rd pr.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7100-2010-4.
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