Portal:Yorkshire
The Yorkshire Portal
Yorkshire (/ˈjɔːrkʃər, -ʃɪər/ YORK-shər, -sheer) 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 its original county town, the city of York.
The south-west of Yorkshire is densely populated, and includes the cities of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Wakefield. The north and east of the county are more sparsely populated, however the north east includes the southern part of the Teesside conurbation, and the port city of Kingston upon Hull is located in the south-east. York is located near the centre of the county. Yorkshire has a coastline to the North Sea to the east. The North York Moors occupy the north east of the county, and the centre contains the Vale of Mowbray in the north and the Vale of York in the south. The west contains part of the Pennines, which form the Yorkshire Dales in the north-west. (Full article...)
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The Battle of Towton was the "largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil". The engagement took place near the village of the same name in Yorkshire on 29 March 1461, a Palm Sunday. It was part of the series of civil wars—the Wars of the Roses—fought between the Houses of Lancaster and York. More than 50,000 soldiers were mustered for this battle. The reigning king of England, Henry VI, headed the Lancastrians, while the Yorkists were led by Edward IV, who had declared himself king and was using this battle to affirm his claim. Their armies met on a plateau near Towton amidst a snowstorm. The Lancastrians, superior in numbers, were lured out of their defensive positions by the Yorkist archers, who took advantage of the strong wind to outrange their counterparts and inflict casualties without suffering any in return. The ensuing melee raged for hours, and the Yorkists finally gained victory after the arrival of their reinforcements. Many Lancastrians were killed in their panicked flight from the battlefield, and the heralds reported a count of 28,000 dead. Henry fled to Scotland, leaving Edward free to start the Yorkist dynasty. (more...)
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Credit: Misterweiss
Fishing boats in Whitby harbour. Whitby is a historic town on the North Yorkshire coast known as a fishing port and tourist destination. (read more . . . )
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Guy Fawkes (13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606), also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Fawkes was born and educated in York. His father died when Fawkes was aged eight, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes later converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years' War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch rebels. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England but was unsuccessful. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England.
Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the drawing and quartering that followed.
Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, which has been commemorated in England since 5 November 1605. His effigy is burned on a bonfire, often accompanied by a firework display. (read more . . . )
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The Churches Conservation Trust, which was initially known as the Redundant Churches Fund, is a charity whose purpose is to protect historic churches at risk, those that have been made redundant by the Church of England. The Trust was established by the Pastoral Measure of 1968. The legally defined object of the Trust is "the preservation, in the interests of the nation and the Church of England, of churches and parts of churches of historic and archaeological interest or architectural quality vested in the Fund ... together with their contents so vested".
The Trust cares for over 350 churches. The charity is financed partly by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Church Commissioners, but grants from those bodies were frozen in 2001, since when additional funding has come from other sources, including the general public. During the 2016-2017 period, the Trust's income was £9,184,283 and expenditures totaled £9,189,061; 92% of the latter was spent on front line projects. During that year it had 64 employees, and received the support of up to 2,000 volunteers. The charity is run by a board of trustees, who delegate the day-to-day management to a chief executive and his senior management team. (Full article...)List of selected lists
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Selected Did You Know . . .
- ... that six Pre-Raphaelite artists designed the set of stained glass panels (pictured) illustrating scenes from the story of Sir Tristram and la Belle Isoude as told in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur?
- ... that Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey discusses both issues of the fair treatment of governesses and the ethical claim of animals to human protection?
- ... that the Kirklees Priory in West Yorkshire is the supposed site of Robin Hood's grave?
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