Wakefield (England)

This Anglican cathedral was first built in 1329 but reconstructed several times, and most of what you see now is Victorian Gothic. Its spire is 247 ft / 75 m) tall.

Small local history museum on the ground floor of city council offices and library.

Opened in 2011, this is the city's top sight – though it’s debatable whether, given its concrete brutalist design, it counts as an “attraction”. Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth spent their early years in Wakefield district and their work and story makes up the bulk of the permanent collection. There are also rotating exhibitions of other artists.

Little more than a moat and a stump, you come for the views and the history. In 1460 during the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Wakefield was fought nearby, and Richard Duke of York was killed. It was also a royalist stronghold during the Civil War, and the victorious parliamentarians wrecked the remains.

Fine 18th-century mansion in Adams Palladian style, period furnishings and extensive parkland, now run by National Trust. It's on the site of a 12th century Augustinian priory swept away at the Dissolution of 1540. John Harrison who solved the “Longitude Problem” was born nearby, and one of his original clocks is here.

Few of us nowadays will ever go underground in a working coal mine, so this museum (the former Caphouse Colliery) is an essential experience of this great but departed industry. The mine was active from the 1770s to 1985, then re-opened as a museum in 1988. The old guard may be shocked to learn that this "identifies as women-owned". Scrubbing muck off your man's back in a tin bath not good enough for you, lass?

Extensive outdoor and smaller indoor collection, mostly by Moore and Hepworth, plus various temporary installations. Many visitors miss the Skyspace, a Tyrell installation in a former deer hide. The park is centred on Bretton Hall, a mansion of 1720 and later a college. No visits to this, the Groucho Club of London are converting it into their northern outpost.