Pontefract
or POMFRET, a market-town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England; an eminence near the influx of the Calder to the Aire, 13 miles S. E. of Leeds. It stands on the line of a Roman road, but seems to have arisen round its Norman castle, which, founded about 1076 by Ilbert de Lacy, was the scene of the execution or murder of the Earl of Lancaster (1322), Richard II. (1400), and Earl Rivers (1483), was taken in the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), and during the Great Rebellion sustained four sieges, being finally dismantled in 1649, after its capture by Lambert.
There are two old churches, a town hall (rebuilt 1796), a market hall (1860), grammar school of Edward VI. a (1549), and large market gardens and nurseries, the growing of liquorice for the lozenges called "Pomfret cakes" being a specialty as old as about 1562.