Actively working to preserve the integrity of Yorkshire
Fountains Abbey near Ripon and Saltaire industrial village near Bradford seem as far apart in spirit as it is possible to be. They represent two contrasting Yorkshires, Fountains serene, rural and changeless, Saltaire workaday and urban, one 12th century, the other 19th. Yet both reflect the County’s pride in its history, for they have achieved universal fame, being listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO along- side names of stunning resonance like the Great Wall of China.
Pride is the theme of this brief selective scan of Yorkshire’s history. It’s a feeling often assumed to belong to the last two hundred years and the people of industrial Yorkshire; and it was probably at its strongest in the hundred years after 1850, about the time when Saltaire came into being.
But there’s evidence that it existed long before, when the southern part of the West Riding had little more industry than the Dales country has today. In 1682, at the annual ‘feast’ of the London Yorkshire Society, George Hickes, Chaplain to the King, proclaimed
’Our County is the epitome of England: whatsoever is excellent in the whole land being found in proportion thereto…. Besides, God hath been pleased to make it the birthplace and nursery of many Great men and special Instruments of his Glory’.
