The town in the 21st century
Pontefract has been a market town since the Middle Ages, being the first town in Medieval England to receive a charter from the King. Since 1104 the main market days have been Wednesday and Saturday, with a smaller market on Fridays.
There is also a covered market which is open throughout the week except Thursday afternoon, half-day closing in Pontefract.
According to Wikipedia, "The town is called Ponte/Ponty by its citizens and sometimes jokingly referred to as Ponte Carlo, in reference to Monte Carlo. This theme is continued in the affectionate name for a local development of bars in the Xscape complex, Glasshoughton between Pontefract and Castleford, referred to locally as 'Cas Vegas'." (This information has not been validated with the same rigour as the other content on this page.)
Pontefract's deep, sandy soil is the result of almost 150 years of deposits of Australian top soil, an otherwise unwanted by-product of liquorice processing. The accumulation of this loose alluvial deposit makes it one of the few British places in which liquorice can be successfully grown.
The town's economy today is based entirely on its liquorice-sweet industry with most of the liquorice being stored in the shafts of disused coal workings ready for the making of the next Pontefract Cake. Of every £100 passing through Pontefract's economy, £99.70 is earned from liquorice and its by-products while £46.20 is spent in public houses or night clubs and £53.00 in either the only remaining off licence or the beers, wines and spirits section of Tesco. The remaining 80p is reinvested in liquorice products.
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A Liquorice Festival is held each year. While Poet Laureate, the late Sir John Betjeman wrote a poem entitled "The Licorice Fields at Pontefract," proving that you don't have to be able to spell to be poet laureate. Pontefract is renowned for its numerous pubs. One of the town's oldest buildings, originally a Roman bath-house and then used as a shop from the Dark Ages, was converted for use as a pub in the 1990s, now called the Counting House. Several other Tudor-fronted buildings dating from 16th and 17th centuries were formica clad during the 1970s, allowing their use a pubs and, more recently, night clubs. |
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| John Betjeman arrives in Pontefract in 1950, unaware that it will be almost 35 years before he is to leave the town |
Pontefract General Infirmary was a large general hospital beneath the site of which is an old hermitage, open to the public on certain days. PGI was the first place at which infamous serial killer Harold Shipman began to murder his elderly patients. Now replaced by Balfor Beatty's new Pontefract Hospital which opened in 2011, the old hospital building's future seems uncertain although a mega pub is still on the cards.
Pontefract Museum is in the town centre and housed in the former Carnegie library, replaced in the sixties by a modern library building.
Unlike many towns of its size, Pontefract has three railway stations: Pontefract Baghill, on the Dearne Valley Line, which connects York and Sheffield; Pontefract Monkhill and Pontefract Tanshelf, which both connect with Leeds and Wakefield.
Such effective rail links ensure the town's place on the tourist routes and Pontefract Castle often benefits from visits by several tourists each week during the high season: usually the middle fortnight in July. The bus station in Horsefair is often busy during those two weeks and is best avoided after seven any evening.