All Saints

All Saints church in Pontefract lies near the castle. Most people call it the old church - some parts were built in the 1300s.

At work the other day someone was asking if Pontefract had a river. Their belief was that most towns had a river. I'd never thought about this but the closest Pontefract has is a beck. The next question then was why is the town there if it doesn't have a river. I assumed it was because of the castle. This led me to do a bit of an internet search and although not answering the question on why was the town there, I did find out that my old history teacher did locate the area where the broken bridge was after which Pontefract was named (In both Latin and French Pontefract means broken bridge). This bridge went over the beck that runs through the town. The sad thing was, very recently during road works to eliminate flooding in the area, an old stone arch was discovered deep beneath the road. Unfortunately it was destroyed.

My chain stayed on today. Confidence has been restored in the bike.