Immediately prior to its dissolution it extended north to south from the suburbs of Leeds to Barnsley and east to west from Kellington to Todmorden.

[1] After discussions in the mid-1870s as to where a new diocese in the West Riding of Yorkshire should be, Wakefield, with a population of under 30,000, was chosen before Leeds and Bradford and Huddersfield and Halifax.

Wakefield was then the county town of the West Riding and had a large medieval church.

The old archdeaconry of Halifax, in the northwest, the deaneries of Birstall, Halifax and Dewsbury, became the archdeaconry of Pontefract, covering the deaneries of Barnsley, Birstal, Dewsbury, Pontefract and Wakefield in the east and the archdeaconry of Huddersfield, which covered the deaneries of Hemworth, Huddersfield, Pontefract, Silkstone and Wakefield, became the new archdeaconry of Halifax, covering the west (the deaneries of Halifax and Huddersfield).

[7] The merger came into force on 20 April 2014, at which point the Bradford, Ripon and Leeds and Wakefield dioceses merged.