I live in Sheffield and do a lot of walking in my spare time. I don't drive, so I do most of my walking from public transport. And so, in the aftermath of the COVID lockdown in 2020, when people were encouraged to go out and exercise but stay local, I decided to start going for walks from the railway stations in and around first the city and then South Yorkshire. I quickly realised when I looked up a list of railway stations in the area on the internet that they include places I’d never have dreamed of going for a walk, and in some cases places I wasn’t familiar with at all. But I’ve always been interested in local history and always had a fondness for town trails and history walks and I gradually realised… everywhere has something of interest to see. As this turned out to be true, I had an idea – why not plan and do a walk from every railway station in Yorkshire? Hence this – a document of my ongoing exploration of the county of my birth.
But before exploring Yorkshire, it is necessary to define it. The boundaries of the historic county of Yorkshire have remained largely unchanged since the twelfth century, when the neighbouring counties of Lancashire, Westmorland and County Durham were established. Before that, Yorkshire was effectively the Viking Kingdom of York, the southern part of Northumbria. The historic county of Yorkshire extends from the River Tees in the north to the River Sheaf, the Shire Brook and the Humber in the south, the coast in the east, and the Pennines in the west. It is bordered by the historic counties of County Durham, Westmorland, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, and basically looks like this:
(Taken from an interactive map of the historic counties of the British Isles at Wikishire)
It was historically divided into three Ridings (from an Old Norse word for “thirds”) by the Vikings, with York inside its walls in the centre and not in any of the three. Roughly speaking the North Riding was separated from the West Riding by the River Ouse and the East Riding by the River Derwent, whilst the lower part of the Ouse also divided the East and West Ridings from one another:
(From the Yorkshire Ridings Society website)
So far, so straightforward, but anyone born after 1974 might find this confusing and wonder why I’ve used the phrase “historic county” several times in a single paragraph. Since 1888, the three Ridings had been reclassified as administrative counties, but had more or less kept their historical borders. The Local Government Act 1972 was an Act of Parliament which, to the annoyance of many both at the time and subsequently, carved the country up into metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, creating South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire. South Yorkshire is largely the bottom part of the West Riding, but includes bits of the historic county of Derbyshire (specifically bits that had been within the boundaries of the City of Sheffield since 1934) and a tiny chunk of Nottinghamshire, whilst the East Riding of Yorkshire is essentially the historic East Riding, but with a bit of the West Riding included. The very top part of the West Riding became part of North Yorkshire, whilst West Yorkshire included bits of Lancashire and Lancashire gained bits of the West Riding. The top part of the North Riding became Cleveland, a newly-formed ceremonial county that was itself abolished in 1996. For the purposes of this exploration of Yorkshire by train, the historic county boundaries are adhered to, and those of the Ridings discussed. Nevertheless, for practical and illustrative purposes, I will occasionally refer to other divisions.
Yorkshire has some one-hundred and eighty railway stations at the time of writing, with a few more scheduled to open in the next few years:
Like most places in Britain, it once had many more – roughly five hundred and sixty stations are lost, mostly to the Beeching Axe, of which around a score have reopened as part of heritage railway lines. As a result, there are many places in Yorkshire well worth a visit, but which are not currently accessible by train: the North Riding is particularly impoverished in this regard. Nevertheless, there are still many places to visit and explore, many of them largely unknown outside of the local area, with architectural curiosities, industrial heritage, buildings rich in history, and havens for wildlife to be found in the unlikeliest of places.
The walks vary in length from about three miles to twelve, although most are roughly six miles long. In general, town and city centre walks are the shortest, to allow time to explore and visit museums, castles and cathedrals. And on that note, we start our exploration of Yorkshire in Sheffield, in South Yorkshire.
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