Portal:Yorkshire

Middleton is a largely residential suburb of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England and historically a village in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It is situated on a hill 4 miles (6 km) south of Leeds city centre and 165 miles (266 km) north north-west of London. In 2001 the population of the Middleton Park ward of Leeds City Council was 27,487.

Middleton was occupied before the Norman Conquest and recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. It developed as a manorial estate and its owners began to exploit the coal seams which outcropped within its boundaries. At the start of the Industrial Revolution a wooden wagonway was built to link the coal pits to Leeds. The colliery agent, John Blenkinsop designed an iron railway and its first steam-powered locomotive which was built by Matthew Murray in Holbeck. The coal mines on which the local economy was based lasted until 1967 and the railway is a preserved and run by a trust after operating for 200 years.

Middleton Park, a remnant of the manorial estate, contains a large area of ancient woodland and parts of it, where coal was mined, are designated a scheduled ancient monument. It was the location of Middleton Hall and Middleton Lodge homes to the local gentry.

The village developed along Town Street, a school, chapel and church were built in the 19th century but after the land was acquired by Leeds Council in 1920 a large council housing estate was built on the flatter land to the south, completely changing the rural nature of the settlement. (read more . . . )

Captain James Cook FRS RN (27 October 1728 (O.S.) – 14 February 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer born in Marton in North Yorkshire. Ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy, Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager, and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham, and helped to bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. (read more . . . )

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...)

• ... that Fountains Fell, (pictured), a mountain in the Yorkshire Dales, England, is named after Fountains Abbey whose monks grazed sheep there in the 13th century?
• ...that the Rotunda Museum houses one of the foremost collections of Jurassic geology on the Yorkshire Coast?
• ... that All Saints Church, Helmsley, contains two chapels dedicated to different saints?
• ...that an estimated 20 people died after eating peppermint humbugs that were accidentally made with arsenic in the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning?