North Lees

Ripon Parks is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, or SSSI, situated north of Ripon, to the west of the River Ure and to the east of the village of North Stainley, in North Yorkshire, England. It was once part of the land held since the Middle Ages as a deer park by the archbishops of York (including Cardinal Wolsey) and the canons of Ripon. The site was designated as an SSSI in 1983, because its varied habitats are valued for their breeding birds, amphibians and varied flora. The woods here are "of note" for the parasitic flowers of common toothwort and yellow star-of-Bethlehem. A small part of the site is accessible via public footpaths; there are no public facilities or dedicated car parks. The site incorporates the High Batts Nature Reserve, which is privately run for training, recording and educational purposes, and accessible to members only, except for its annual open day. Ripon Parks is now owned by the Ministry of Defence, and parts of the site are used as military training areas.

Claro Barracks is a British Army installation in Ripon, North Yorkshire. It is set to close in 2026.

Ripon Grammar School is a co-educational, boarding and day, selective grammar school in Ripon, North Yorkshire, England. It has been named top-performing state school in the north for ten years running by The Sunday Times. It is one of the best-performing schools in the North of England; in 2011, 91% of pupils gained the equivalent of 5 or more GCSEs at grade C or above, including English and maths; the figure has been over 84% consistently since at least 2006. As a state school, it does not charge fees for pupils to attend, but they must pass an entrance test at 11+ or 13+. There is no selection test for entry into sixth form as pupils are admitted on the basis of their GCSE grades.

Outwood Academy Ripon is a small mixed secondary school with academy status situated in the city of Ripon, in North Yorkshire, England. It provides for ages 11 to 18, and has an enrolment of around 700 pupils. The school is operated by Outwood Grange Academies Trust and the current principal is Rachel Donohue. It is one of over 11 secondary schools in the local area, including nearby selective Ripon Grammar School, and the more distant Thirsk School and Sixth Form College and Boroughbridge High School.

St Wilfrid's Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Ripon, North Yorkshire, England. It was built from 1860 to 1862 and designed by Joseph Hansom. It is located on the corner of Trinity Lane and Coltsgate Hill to the north of the centre of Ripon. It is in the Gothic Revival style and is a Grade II* listed building.

The Liberty of Ripon or Riponshire was a liberty possessing separate county jurisdiction, although situated within the county of Yorkshire, England. The liberty was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York, a privilege claimed to have been granted by King Aethelstan in the 10th century. The liberty was governed by a high steward and justices of the peace, appointed by the archbishop, and the area had separate quarter sessions, in conjunction with the mayor and recorder of the borough of Ripon, in whose town hall they were held. In 1831 the following parishes and townships (locally in the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire) were in the liberty: Most of Ripon Felixkirk Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe Kilburn, North Yorkshire Nidd with Killinghall Marton-cum-Moxby In 1836 the temporal jurisdiction of the archbishop was ended, with the power to appoint justices revested in the crown, and in 1837 the townships locally in the North Riding were removed from the liberty. In 1889, the Local Government Act 1888 came into operation. Section 48 of the Act merged "every liberty and franchise of a county" into its surrounding administrative county. While this was the end of the liberty's administrative functions, separate quarter sessions continued until 1953, and it was also a distinct unit for land tax purposes for some time.

The Ripon Spa Baths are a grade II listed building in Ripon, North Yorkshire, England. It was built between 1904–05 as a spa but failed to compete with the larger facilities at nearby Harrogate. In 1936 a new pool was constructed to the rear and the facility converted to a swimming baths. The building is noted for its ornate terracotta-clad frontage and received listed building protection in 1980. Harrogate Borough Council proposed selling the building for housing development in 2008 on the grounds that it required significant structural repair. The sale was cancelled but in 2021 the council made a new proposal to sell the structure.

Ripon Community Hospital is a health facility in Firby Lane, Ripon, North Yorkshire, England. It is managed by Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust. It is a Grade II listed building.

The River Laver is a tributary of the River Skell, itself a tributary of the River Ure in North Yorkshire, England. The name is of Brittonic origin, from labaro, meaning "talkative", i.e. a babbling brook. The Afon Llafar in Wales shares the same name. The Laver is noted as a fly fishing river, especially for brown trout and grayling.

The Wakeman's House is a historic building in Ripon, a city in Yorkshire, in England. The building was constructed as a house in the 16th or early 17th century, facing onto High Skellgate. In about 1600, the entrance was altered to face onto the Market Square, and over time most of the building was demolished, leaving one wing standing. It was traditionally considered to have been the house of Hugh Ripley, the last Wakeman of Ripon, who in 1604 became the city's first mayor. In 1917, the remaining wing was under threat of demolition, but was purchased by the city council and restored, with a kitchen added at the rear. The council opened the building as a museum, and stripped the plaster from the front, to expose the timber frame. The building was Grade II* listed in 1949. After the museum closed, the building served successively as a tea shop, a tourist information centre, the offices of the Ripon Improvement Trust, a dress shop, and then a tea shop again. In 2000, the kitchen was demolished, and public toilets were constructed on the site. The building has two main storeys and an attic. It is timber-framed throughout, with a stone slate roof. The front of the building has oriel windows on both floors, while the attic has a window in its gable end. Inside, the staircase has balusters with a pattern of circles and rectangles. A local tradition claims that the building is haunted by the ghost of Hugh Ripley, even though he never lived in the building. When it reopened in the 1920s after restoration, there was a ceremony at which the city hornblower performed. Several members of the crowd claimed to have seen the ghost at an upstairs window.

The Ripon Obelisk is an obelisk monument in the centre of the Yorkshire settlement of Ripon in Northern England. It was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and constructed in 1702 with the support of John Aislabie, Ripon's Member of Parliament. It has been granted Grade I status and was first listed in 1949. It is located in the market square of Ripon, one of the smallest settlements in England to have city status. It stands at around eighty feet in height. Hawksmoor may have been inspired by recent discoveries that Ripon might have originally been a Roman town. In his 1724 book A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain Daniel Defoe notes "In the middle of it stands a curious column of stone, imitating the obelisks of the ancients, though not so high, but rather like the pillar in the middle of Covent Garden, or that in Lincoln's Inn". In 1781 the monument was restored by William Aislabie, the son of the obelisk's founder and himself a long-standing MP to celebrate his sixty years in Parliament. At this point a weathervane was added in the style of the Ripon hornblower. A plaque was added soon afterwards, which misleadingly implies that William was the builder of the monument.

Ripon () is a cathedral city and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. The city is located at the confluence of two tributaries of the River Ure, the Laver and Skell. Within the boundaries of the historic West Riding of Yorkshire, the city is noted for its main feature, Ripon Cathedral, which is architecturally significant, as well as the Ripon Racecourse and other features such as its market. The city was originally known as Inhrypum. Bede records that Alhfrith, king of the Southern Northumbrian kingdom of Deira, gave land at Ripon to Eata of Hexham to build a monastery and the abbot transferred some of his monks there, including a young Saint Cuthbert who was guest-master at Ripon abbey. Both Bede in his Life of Cuthbert and Eddius Stephanus in his Life of Wilfred state that when Eata was subsequently driven out by Alhfrith, the abbey was given to Saint Wilfrid who replaced the timber church with a stone built church. This was during the time of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, a period during which it enjoyed prominence in religious importance in Great Britain. It was for a period under Viking control, and later suffered under the Normans. After a brief period of building projects under the Plantagenets, the city emerged with a prominent wool and cloth industry. Ripon became well known for its production of spurs during the 16th and 17th centuries, but would later remain largely unaffected by the Industrial Revolution. Ripon is the third-smallest city in England and the smallest in Yorkshire, by population. According to the 2011 United Kingdom Census it had a population of 16,702, an increase on the 2001 United Kingdom Census figure of 15,922. It is located 11 miles (18 km) south-west of Thirsk, 16 miles (26 km) south of Northallerton and 12 miles (19 km) north of Harrogate. As well as its racecourse and cathedral, Ripon is a tourist destination because of its proximity to the UNESCO World Heritage Site which consists of the Studley Royal Park and Fountains Abbey.