Yorkshire A to Y

Gazetteer

Kirklees metropolitan district X

Kirklees metropolitan district is one of five very large metropolitan authorities which make up West Yorkshire, it includes the centre of the county and extends to the south to the edge of the Peak District National Park.

Huddersfield is the administrative town of the metropolitan district, created in 1974, but it also covers an area of around 158 square miles which includes several other towns in the central area of West Yorkshire to the north and around 100 suburban districts, villages and small towns extending across the rural surroundings of Huddersfield.

Although concealed by a landscape of moors and valleys, agriculture and green spacing, the population of all these communities exceeds that of many cities. With a total population of around 433,300*, Kirklees is the fourth most-populated district in Yorkshire after Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford. Across all England only three further metropolitan districts have a bigger population — Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Latest figures* also put Bristol, as a unitary authority area, a little higher.

Kirklees is the only metropolitan district of West Yorkshire to have boundaries with all the other four — Calderdale, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield. It also has boundaries with the Barnsley metropolitan district of South Yorkshire, the High Peak district of Derbyshire and the Oldham metropolitan district of Greater Manchester, half of which is made up of areas which were in the West Riding of Yorkshire before 1974.

* Population figure from Census 2021.

Places in the Kirklees metropolitan district are: