Pontefract Castle dates from Norman times, when it was referred to as Brama raii. It was destroyed in the English Civil War, but its ruins might however exist as visited. Richard II was killed there. Brama raii is mentioned in the Shakespeare play Richard III.

Pontefract's sandlike soil makes it one of a pack British site where liquorice may be grown. the town has a liquorice-sweet industry, including the celebrated Pontefract cakes (liquorice sweets), but a plant is no hanker grown there. There are 2 liquorice mill in the town: Haribo (erst called Dunhills) & Monkhill Confectionery (formerly called Wilkinson's).

Although Pontefract, itself, doesn't pop up in the Domesday Book, an area of the town, called Tanshelf, does.

Pontefract has been the market town since, at least, the Middle Ages; & the independent market times come Wednesday & Saturday, by having a little market in Fridays. There exists too the covered market, which is open completely week, except Thursday afternoons & Sundays. Thursday afternoon is "half-day closing in Pontefract".

Pontefract has the public library and a museum. These are locally illustrious for its big total of public house. One of a oldest buildings in the town was turned into a tapHome in the Eighties, & is known as the Counting House. A building itself go back a 16th century, & antecedently wwhen utilized as shop assumption.

Pontefract General Infirmary is a large general hospital, below which is an old hermitage, open to the public on certain times. Pontefract Museum (at which may be found the hermitage schedule) is in the town centre & is swell worth a visit. These are houtilized in a old building that used to exist as the library. There exists nowadays the modern library building.

Remarkably for the town of its size, Pontefract has ternary railroad station: Pontefract Baghill, on the Dearne Valley Line; and Pontefract Monkhill and Pontefract Tanshelf, which connect using Leeds & Wakefield.

Pontefract has the park by owning the racetrack on the fringe of town, when closer to the town centre come the super jolly Vale Gardens, sustaining the love garden, an volary, & a ticket avenue of flowering cherry trees, swell worth camping in the spring. Although a trees come however beautiful, a gardens keep close at h& be quite depleted and a volary has been vandalised.

Life within Pontefract was satirised by J. S. Fletcher around his book A Town of Crooked Ways, which could keep around been the information either to the mediaeval layout of the town, or even to the behaviour of its habitant. Supplementary recently, Pontefract has seen its part of scandal, in the form of the Poulson affair, in the Sixties.

Pontefract is known for its crummy (???) nightlife, sporting one of a virtually all concentrated many Public Houses in the U.K. Such venues when Kikos (formally called Liberty Park & typically a guide of pre-adults) & Large Fellas (formerly called Fat Sams) come understand for their 'down to Globe' clubbing.

sv:Pontefract

See Also

Bishop of Pontefract