a county (up to 1975) in Great Britain, located between the eastern spurs of the Pennines and the North Sea. Area, 15, 700 sq km; population, 5 million (1971). Yorkshire consisted of three ridings, West Riding, East Riding, and North Riding, the first two of which belong to the new official Yorkshire and Humberside economic region and the third to the North Yorkshire economic region.
Most of the industry is concentrated in West Riding, where the northern section of the country’s largest coal field (the Yorkshire field) is located. The industrial centers are the Leeds-Bradford conurbation, with machine building, including machine-tool construction, and 70 percent of Great Britain’s wool industry, and the cities of Sheffield and Rotherham, with high-grade steel production, machine building, and cutlery manufacture. North Riding has a ferrous metal industry in the Tyneside urban area and a large chemical industry in Billingham and Wilton. In East Riding is the Frodingham iron-ore deposit and a ferrous metal industry (in Scunthorpe). Ports serving all of Yorkshire, including Hull, Grimsby, and Immingham, are located on the Humber estuary. In the eastern part of the county, various types of agriculture predominate; in the west, in the foothills of the Pennines, sheep are raised; and, around the cities, agriculture serving city markets is developed.
N. M. POL’SKAIA