The West Riding as an administrative county prior to its abolition in 1974. County boroughs are marked in yellow.

The term West Riding usually refers to the West Riding of Yorkshire in England, though Lindsey also possessed a West Riding.

Yorkshire's West Riding comprised an historical subdivision of the county of Yorkshire, roughly corresponding to its territorial successors West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire plus the Craven and Harrogate districts of North Yorkshire. Small parts lie in Lancashire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester and the post-1996 East Riding of Yorkshire.

It had an area of 1,771,562 acres (7,169 km²). Of this area the southern industrial district, considered in the broadest application of the term as extending between Sheffield and Skipton, Sheffield and Doncaster, and Leeds and the county boundary, covered rather less than one-half. Within this district are Barnsley, Batley, Bradford, Brighouse, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Leeds, Morley, Ossett, Pontefract, Pudsey, Rotherham, Sheffield, Todmorden (partly in Lancashire), and Wakefield. Major centres elsewhere in the riding include Harrogate, and Ripon.

Within the industrial region other urban districts included Bingley, Castleford, Cleckheaton, Elland, Featherstone, Handsworth, Hoyland Nether, Liversedge, Mexborough, Mirfield, Normanton, Rawmarsh, Rothwell, Saddleworth, Shipley, Skipton, Sowerby Bridge, Stanley, Swinton, Thornhill, Wombwell and Worsborough. Outside the industrial region we find Goole, Ilkley, Knaresborough and Selby.

Adapted from 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article.