They seem to have managed quite well polishing Leeds.

Leeds is one of the business capitals of the north.

Wakefiled is a pathetic excuse for a city.

As its in Wakey whether there are 15 or 150 I bet there's still only one outside privvy between them.

Is that one of these new cities?

And why would that be then?

Because they re-evaluated their initial decision I guess.

No, you are thinking of Featherstone!



I think one or two people need to lay of Wakey a little bit. It has been a city far, far longer than Leeds and was of course the last and therefore most recent capital City of West Yorkshire, a title that Leeds has never officially held. Leeds is a great and successful phoenix of a City and owes large parts of it's rapid growth to it surrounding towns and nearest City neighbour of Wakefield!

Shirley, the nearest city would be Bratfud? One side of Dick Lane is in Leeds, the other is in Bradford.

I think they are about equally as close to Leeds at around 8 miles city centre, to city centre, but again Bradford, like Leeds, was not an important centre of commerce until the 17th/18th Century and industrial revolution. Anyway, Wakefield was a City before either of them, just think some people are giving Wakefield a hard time without any real justification other than for the sake of putting it down.

Of course, being from York, I look down my nose at all of you.

Exactly, just goes to prove you can polish a turd

Not really.

Leeds has always been a big, relatively affluent and successful city - built as much on its very long held position as a financial centre as anything else.

Wakefield has been more heavilly reliant on different industries that have long since been in decline.

That is not really true. Leeds is a relative recent success story and has only grown big in the last 160/170 years as the industrial revolution took hold. Prior to the 1800 it was nothing more than a village and dwarfed by all it's neighbours and in particular Wakefield which had been the administrative capital of the region since the 14th century, prior to that Pontefract held the dominant position in the region. Town's like Bradford and Leeds grew very large during the late 19th and early 20th century prior to WW11. The order of the region changed over this period and Wakefield and other towns started to be dwarfed by these two now citys.

Post war the Wakefield regions main industry was coal and (and all its off-shoot industrial processes) of course agriculture in the form of mainly the growing of veg and of course Rhubarb. Something ridiculous like 90% of the worlds Rhubarb was gown in the Rhubarb Triangle at it's peak, the majority of which fell into the Wakefield district.

When all of the West Yorkshire traditional industry started to decline Leeds made a very successful switch, during the 70 and 80's, to re-model itself as a financial centre. Wakefield on the other hand sought to exploit it's excellent location in relation to Leeds and more importantly at the cross-roads of the norths motorway system.

Leeds in now the financial capital of the North with Wakefield the distribution capital of West Yorkshire... that is why they are going to get a new ground as well!

Wakefield became a city by virtue of the Church of All Saints being made a Cathedral in 1888, Leeds by Charter in 1893.
I make that about five years.

Wakefield does have the tallest church spire in Yorkshire though (247 feet).


In the 1880's/1890's when they were both given city status, Leeds was already way outstripping Wakefield in all areas except Wakefield's status as the county town (n.b. not capital) of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

omg

Yes, I did not realise it was quite as late as 1888, I thought it had been decades earlier when they split the diocese of Ripon down into smaller areas but you are right it was much later. I think I was confused by the date of the extending of Wakefield Cathedral in the mid 1800's but it was still a parish church then.

PS... and ten and five years before Bradford respectively!





I don't dispute that at all, although I am not sure why you are so insistent on not using the more widely used and understood word of 'capital'? You are once again correct, as the strict definition of the word 'capital' refers only to nations and not regions of nations so it is the county town/city and I did use the modern term of West Yorkshire instead of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and strictly speaking you are again correct because it did not exist as such until after the abolished the County Council... which met at County Hall... in Wakefield!.

If you look at my other post Wakefield was been dwarfed by Leeds from about the mid 1800's onwards and by the late 1800's Bradford and Leeds dominated the region, but you have to acknowledge Wakefield and also Pontefract's historical importance to the region. Not only that, it was the coal mined in Wakefield district that fuelled Leeds industrial success!

I am not sure why we are having a p1ss1ing contest about though? I thought people were giving Wakefield a hard time for no reason really and I think many Leeds residents are quick to condemn it's city neighbour without fully understand it's historical role in the success of the region and what is the very fine city of Leeds.

Even further away from the original spirit of the post, we should all be ganging up against Sheffield whose jealousy of the success of Leeds culminated in their MPs bleating to the Govt about the use of Yorkshire Forward money to assist the development of the Leeds Arena.
Their moaning holds undue wight with the govt because of who their local MPs are & it nearly lost Leeds the major external funding for the Arena.
Mind you the tory leader of the city council didn't help when he boasted that it would be built with or without the Yorks Forward cash.
Had I been in charge of doling out the funds I'd have said, well go on then & we'll give it to somewhere else that can't raise the money itself.
Sheffield has long been envious of the success of Leeds.

I agree with you about the Yorkshire Forward money. I would have expected the Sheffield Arena itself to make some waves but the extent of the intervention of the Sheffield MP's in this matter was out of order in my opinion. We did not see the Manchester MP's bleating about the building of an arena in Leeds and while I know the issue surrounded Yorkshire Forward money primarily, it is about the same distance from Leeds to Manchester as from Leeds to Sheffield. In terms of overall leisure facilities and funding for such, Sheffield has done very well indeed and has an international athletics stadium, international pool, large ice complex and large multi-purpose arena while Leeds only has one of the things on that list. It is not as if the proposal for the Leeds arena was a similar multi-purpose arena set up, the Leeds proposal is for a large 'theatre style' arena.

If the rumours are true Leeds will probably be getting it's own ice rink next to Elland Road fairly soon, the site where, when still at Leeds City Council, I did some feasibility for an arena some 16 or 17 years ago... my how time flies. I wonder if we are going to get the same bleating again from our neighbours in Sheffield?

Sheffield made a complete a[irs[/ie of remodelling itself after the decimation of its main industry in the 1980s and epitomised the disaster that an out-of-town mall can wreak on a city centre (Newcastle didn't do a bad job of cocking the whole thing up either) - both cities look at Leeds' city centre with envious eyes and wonder where all of their Victorian and Edwardian buildings went (how many geordie voices can you hear in Leeds Market on a saturday ?)

...and don't forget nearly killing it's entire city centre retail trade in the 90's buy building an over-large shopping centre next the M1! If it was not for John Lewis and the posh north Derbyshire set shopping there, it would now resemble Castleford town centre... wait a minute... large shopping centre next to motorway kills town centre... whatever next eh, a ski slope!

If I recall correctly Sheffield already has a ski slope but it's outdoors!
Still at least they'll have snow this year.

Quite ... and I agree.
I work on projects that take me to lots of apparently unprepossessing places and there is always something interesting or historic about them (I am deliberately forgetting Milton Keynes ... ).


I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Wakefield, many of my family still live there or thereabouts and I have been very familiar with the place since the 1950's (I could bore for England about Wakefield's history) ... and it has been so badly abused and redeveloped by successive councils that it isn't even a shadow of its former self.
It's a crying shame and Wakefield deserves better ... hence my comments earlier about how I'd be surprised if the park and ride to the proposed stadium was the council's idea.

Maybe that's what happens when you have a city dominated by a single political party over a prolonged period of time?
Those in power do not have to listen to the electorate & believe that come what may they are always right.
Leeds has not been subject to this, usually being controlled by those in opposition nationally so that there are always checks & balances in place. That requires a greater consensus within a city - politically, commercially & financially.
Compare Wakefield with a similar postion until recently in Sheffield and Liverpool. Both cities that declined dramatically during the 70s, 80s & 90s.
All my own thoughts obviously.

But ones with which I'd agree.

Me too. As a resident of Wakefield and a Trinity supporter, we've had too many years of a situation whereby you could put a red rosette on someones cat and it would get voted in.