Yorkshire

County Geography

Yorkshire meets Durham to the north, Westmorland and Lancashire to the west, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire to the south and south-west, and Lincolnshire across the Humber to the south-east, while the North Sea forms the county’s eastern edge.

The Pennine watershed shapes much of the west, the Tees and Humber define major northern and southern approaches, and the long coast closes the east. The Vale of York, Holderness, the Wolds, and the North York Moors give the county its distinctive internal pattern.

Yorkshire is held together by the relationship between western uplands, the Vale of York, eastern lowlands, and the long sea coast. Routes through the vale and across the ridings linked major towns, ports, dales, and moorland into one large but workable county.

Later changes in public administration did not alter that geography. The ridings, the vale, the Pennine side, the Wolds, and the coast still describe the same county.