Pontefract, United Kingdom

The Anglo-Scandinavian township, Tanshelf, recorded as Tateshale, Tateshalla, Tateshalle or Tatessella in the 'Domesday Book, is today occupied by the town of Pontefract. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle made a reference to Tanshelf in 947 when King Eadred of England met with the ruling council of Northumbria to accept its submission. King Eadred did not enjoy Northumbria's support for long, and a year later the kingdom voted Eric Bloodaxe King of York.

When the Domesday survey was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086, Tanshelf was a sizeable settlement. It had a priest, 60 petty burgesses, 16 cottagers, 16 villagers and 8 smallholders, amounting to 101 people. The size of the population might have been four or five times larger as the only people listed were landholders. Tanshelf had a church, a fishery and three mills. Archaeologists discovered the remains of a church on The Booths, off North Baileygate, below the castle. The oldest grave dates from around 690. The church may have been similar to the church at Ledsham. The area of the town market place was the meeting place of the Osgoldcross wapentake. In the Anglo-Saxon period, part of the modern town was known by the Anglo-Scandinavian name as Kirkby.

After the Norman conquest in 1066, almost all of Yorkshire came under the ownership of followers of William the Conqueror; one of whom was Ilbert de Lacy, who became the owner of Tateshale (Tanshelf) where he built a castle.

Pontefract Castle began as a wooden motte and bailey castle before 1086 and was later rebuilt in stone. The de Lacys lived there for more than two centuries and were holders of the castle and the Honour of Pontefract from 1067 until the death of Alice de Lacy in 1348.

King Richard II was murdered at the castle in 1400. Little is known of the nature of his demise; Shakespeare may have "adjusted" the facts for his own purposes. At least three theories attempt to explain his death: either he was starved to death by his keepers, he starved himself to death or he was murdered by Sir Piers (Peter) Exton on 14 February 1399 or 1400.

In Elizabethan times the castle and the town were both referred to as "Pomfret". William Shakespeare's play Richard III mentions the castle:

The town suffered throughout the English Civil War. In 1648–49, the castle was laid siege by Oliver Cromwell, who said it was "... one of the strongest inland garrisons in the kingdom." Three sieges by the Parliamentarians left the town "impoverished and depopulated". In March 1649, after the third siege, Pontefract inhabitants, fearing a fourth, petitioned Parliament for the castle to be slighted. The castle was a magnet for trouble and demolition began in April 1649. The castle ruins are publicly accessible.

Pontefract Priory, a Cluniac priory founded in 1090 by Robert de Lacy and dedicated to St John the Evangelist, was dissolved by royal authority in 1539. The priory maintained the Chartularies of St John, a collection of historic documents later discovered among family papers by Thomas Levett, the High Sheriff of Rutland, a native of Yorkshire, who gave them to Roger Dodsworth, an antiquary. They were published by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.