Yorkshire A to Y

Gazetteer

Wakefield metropolitan district X

Wakefield metropolitan district is one of five very large authorities which make up West Yorkshire and is situated in the south-eastern part of the county.

The city of Wakefield, which had previously provided the headquarters of the West Riding of Yorkshire, became the headquarters in 1974 of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council (which was abolished 12 years later) as well as the administrative centre of the Wakefield metropolitan district.

The metropolitan district covers an area of just over 130 square miles which includes several other towns, including Ossett to the east of the city, the 'Five Towns' area, including Castleford, Featherstone, Knottingley, Normanton and Pontefract to its east and Hemsworth and South Elmsall close to the South Yorkshire boundary. The district also includes many villages, some having grown as coal mining pit villages and some reflecting the agricultural setting of their area.

Although Wakefield has the smallest area of the five West Yorkshire metropolitan districts, the metropolitan districts in Yorkshire average around three times the size of those in other parts of England. Indeed, Wakefield covers about three times the area of Manchester or Newcastle upon Tyne metropolitan districts.

Figures from the 2021 Census show the Wakefield district to have the second-largest percentage rise in population of any district in Yorkshire over the past 10 years and the 353,300 population figure the fifth-largest of districts across all Yorkshire, only below Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford and Kirklees. (Since the 2021 Census, the seven districts of North Yorkshire have been merged and that county-wide unitary authority population is also higher than Wakefield.)

The Wakefield district has boundaries with the West Yorkshire metropolitan districts of Kirklees and Leeds, with North Yorkshire (its former Selby district) to the east and with the Barnsley and Doncaster metropolitan districts of South Yorkshire.

Places in the Wakefield metropolitan district are: