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.