As we celebrate Yorkshire’s national day today, 1 August, once again comes the vexed question: Are we celebrating Yorkshire as a county, or something much more significant and important?
While ‘county’ is still the word mostly commonly used, very largely a result of the success of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, the historical evidence and current political reality of the term county for the whole of Yorkshire is actually very weak.
Pre-Norman Yorkshire
In pre-Norman times, that huge stretch of Northern England between the Humber and the Tees estuaries was, at various times, the Anglian Kingdom of Deira, then part of the great Kingdom of Northumbria which extended to the Scottish border. In the late ninth and early tenth centuries it became the fiercely independent Anglo-Viking Kingdom of Jorvik, which was in turn divided into the three great Thirds or Thriddings we now know as the East, North and West Ridings. These were further subdivided for local administrative purposes into local districts or Wapentakes which survived until the 1830s.
After the death of the last Viking king, Eric Bloodaxe in 974, the thanes of Jorvik – or York-shire as it was first named in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle – agreed to rejoin the powerful Earldom of Northumbria, part of the Federal Kingdom of England, until the tragic event of the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The creation of counties
‘Counties’ were essentially Norman creations. From 1066 until 1889, the former kingdom and earldom of Jorvik, now separated from Northumberland, was degraded into the lower status of a ‘county’ – the word derived from the Norman French for a comte or count, a middle-ranking nobleman. The Normans adapted old English words ‘shire reeve’ (shire meaning a division of a kingdom or region) to create sheriff. In 1066, a local Thane was appointed as the king’s representative or Sheriff of Yorkshire, soon to be replaced in 1068, the year of the Harrying of the North, by a Norman.
Sheriffs of Yorkshire remained in post as legal representatives of the monarch from Norman and later Plantagenet Kings until the creation of the modern English Counties in 1889.
Some areas of former Jorvik west of the Pennines, however, were ceded into the county palatine of Lancashire as early as 1182 and put under a new county jurisdiction. A further complication was to occur when the great city of York, capital of the North and for over a thousand years England’s second city, yet never part of the Yorkshire Ridings, was created a ‘county’ in its own right given its own charter and coat of arms by Richard II in 1396, and where the authority of the Sheriff of Yorkshire held no sway. It is still officially the city and county of York.
Where did the power lie?
In reality, medieval and post-medieval counties had little legal, financial or administrative powers, which were for centuries concentrated in the Norman fortified towns and boroughs, where the descendants of William’s henchmen, the feudal barons, held power, an uneasy situation which led to the Wars of the Roses. This was not fully until resolved until the Tudor hegemony when power was centred, as it still remains, in London.
Over 100 years of changes
Counties as we now understand them as units of democratic local government and local authority responsibility were only created in 1889. Significantly there was never one county of Yorkshire as such, but the Three Ridings of Yorkshire were recognised as full counties in their own right, with their own coats of arms, Lord Lieutenants and most importantly elected councils. York retained its independent status, something that continues to the present day along with the Borough of Kingston-upon-Hull.
However, in 1972, after little real debate, the Ridings and their councils were abolished by the Heath government, to be replaced in 1974 by three metropolitan councils and one, huge sprawling rural council – North Yorkshire. These in turn have been replaced after half a century of constant changes by the present complex structure. We now have four Yorkshire counties. North Yorkshire and East Riding councils are both unitary authorities, West and South Yorkshire are subdivided into nine metropolitan districts or unitaries, and York and Hull remain independent unitaries.
Confusing it most certainly is but it was probably intended to be in terms of Westminster post-colonial divide and rule policies.
Finally a united Yorkshire?
However, things have changed. The creation of the new much powerful metropolitan combined authorities of West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, York and North Yorkshire, and Hull and East Riding in theory at least has given greater power and authority to the people of Yorkshire in at least some key areas – transport, housing, policing and crime control, economic development and strategic planning.
But in a significant new development, through what has been described as the ‘White Rose agreement’ – signed by three of our metro mayors in Selby Abbey on 12 March, and understood to be also supported by the new Hull and East Riding mayor – the mayors have expressed a determination to work together across boundaries to help deliver huge economic, cultural, social and environmental benefits. A single ‘One Yorkshire’ partnership working together for a huge part of England’s North has enormous potential.
For the first time perhaps since the Norman Conquest, Yorkshire with its population of around 5.4 million people will have a single unified voice, with which to plead and persuade not just central government, but other national and international bodies, working with public, private and voluntary sector partners to secure greater inward investment and deliver strategic policies.
Decision-making closer to our communities will always be more effective than can ever be provided by bureaucrats in an over-centralised state capital, remotely situated 200 miles away, not answerable to a more local electorate. In this respect Britain may be slowly edging towards a more European style of more democratic, even federal governance.
So what actually is Yorkshire?
So, if we are to avoid using the word ‘county’ for Yorkshire, what are the appropriate words to use? Probably the best term is ‘region’ as that is the accepted international term for an area of a country as large and important as ours. The English regions are still recognised by the EU and also exist for statistical purposes. A restored Regional Economic Development Agency must be a priority for agreement partners, as a first key stage of what can evolve into fuller regional devolution.
The fact that England’s nine regions already exist statistically, if not legally, also offers a clear logic. The model that many Yorkshire people also look to is the hugely successful Greater London region with its own single elected mayor and budget-making elected regional assembly.
The other powerful word to use is ‘province’, as that can be extended to embrace the idea of a cultural province. This includes those parts of the three Ridings removed from within millennia-old boundaries and put into Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria and what is now Teesside. In terms of language, culture, and identity, these former parts of ancient Yorkshire can still be part of the wider cultural province of Yorkshire, in terms of the arts or cultural identity, if individuals and communities so choose.
So, as we celebrate Yorkshire Day 2025, let’s settle for Yorkshire being, if not quite a country, a lot more than a mere county.
