Wakefield is a city in Yorkshire, south of Leeds, and by the River Calder. Its population was 76,886 in 2001, of which 1,657 were prisoners. Today it forms part of a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire named the City of Wakefield. The boundaries of the actual city are subject to a wide range of definitions, and it is not clear what definition the census was using in its calculations.The town was a centre for cloth dealing and had its own Piece Hall. The area was once dominated by coal-mining - a key driver for the industrial revolution. By the time of the 1984 Miners' Strike, all the pits in the city had already been closed, but there were 15 pits in the rest of the district and demonstrations in support of the strike frequently took place in the city. The city suffered a double blow through the closure of local pits and the abolition of West Yorkshire County Council, which had been based in Wakefield. It long remained a depressed area, but fortunes have risen recently and unemployment is now around the national average.It was a village during Anglo-Saxon times and appeared in the Domesday Book as Oderesfelt. However, there had been a settlement in the vicinity since Roman times, as evidenced by discovery of the remains of a Roman fort at Slack, just west of the town. Castle Hill, a major landmark of the town, was originally an Iron Age hillfort.
