From its status as a major coal mining centre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and today the home of the National Coal Mining Museum at Caphouse Colliery that retains England’s last deep coal mine, to its current role as the capital of Yorkshire’s so-called ‘Rhubarb Triangle’, Wakefield has a proud and distinctive identity. This extraordinary history is embodied in the buildings that have shaped the town.

Wakefield in 50 Buildings explores the history of this rich and vibrant community through a selection of its greatest architectural treasures, from the early medieval Grade I-listed parish church, which became a cathedral in 1880, to the acclaimed Hepworth Wakefield art gallery, which opened in 2011. Author and architectural historian Peter Thornborrow and photographer Paul Gwilliam celebrate Wakefield’s architectural heritage in a new and accessible way as they guide the reader around the town’s historic and modern buildings.