North Yorkshire County Boundary Changes in 1974
Yorkshire, before the redrawing of the county boundaries in 1974, was the largest county in England, containing about an eighth of the country's area and a tenth of its population. The revision of the county bourdaries gave a small western corner, embracing Barnoldswick and the Forest of Bowland, to Lancashire, a north-western corner, containing Sedburgh, to the new county of Cumbria, a northerly corner containing Bowes to Durham, and the top edge of the North Riding, including Saltburn and Redcar on the coast, and running inland to Middlesborough, to the new county called Cleveland. More drastic was the removal of the East Riding, including the Wolds, into a newly constituted county called Humberside, in which was also incorporated the northern part of the old Lincolnshire. The much-reduced Yorkshire is now divided into three administritive zones: North Yorkshire, comprising most of the old North Riding; West Yorkshire, embodying the former West Riding; and South Yorkshire. The shape of Yorkshire is simple: roughly a square, pulled down a little in its lower left-hand corner. Its west boundary is formed by the line north and south of the mountains of the Pennine chain, and it stretches right across England eastwards towards a slightly north-west south-east coast on the North Sea. If its shape is simple, however, in all other aspects Yorkshire is highly diversified. Geologically it is amazingly various, and this has given it not only a most delightful and refreshing variety of landscape but certain contrasts in history and economics, in dialect and in ways of life