British Cities Trivia
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49 free British Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Britain's cities are a tangle of claims and counter-claims: the smallest, the most northerly, the one with its own telephone network, the one that invented the tank, the one that beat odds nobody had ever seen. Many of them did not officially become cities until the twenty-first century, and several still argue over who got there first. This quiz spreads fifty questions across more than forty of them, from the Potteries to the Highlands and from Cornwall to County Antrim. Expect cathedral records, football firsts, nicknames, famous sons and daughters, the films shot in their cloisters and the year each one finally won its letters patent. It suits a pub quiz round, a classroom geography lesson or anyone who has lived in one of these places and wants to see how well they really know it.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Devon port, where Drake reputedly finished his bowls before the Armada, did the Mayflower finally leave in 1620?
Plymouth
Plymouth was where the Mayflower finally sailed alone, after the leaking Speedwell had forced both vessels back twice.
Q 02Which English city has been home to Cadbury's Bournville factory since 1879?
Birmingham
Birmingham is often said to have more miles of canal than Venice, though the Canal & River Trust notes the tally depends on where you draw the boundaries.
Q 03In which city's Eagle pub did Francis Crick announce in 1953 that he and Watson had found 'the secret of life'?
Cambridge
Cambridge had been a city only since 1951, and it has no cathedral, falling instead within the Diocese of Ely.
Q 04Which new town of 1967, famous for roundabouts and Concrete Cows, contains the codebreaking estate Bletchley Park?
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes had bid for city status several times before it finally succeeded in 2022.
Q 05In which city did protesters topple a statue of slave trader Edward Colston and push it into the harbour in June 2020?
Bristol
Bristol's 'Colston Four' were cleared of criminal damage in January 2022, and the statue went on display, graffiti intact, at the M Shed museum.
Q 06Which city, UK City of Culture in 2017, is the only one in Britain with its own independent telephone network company?
Hull
Hull's council ran its own phone network, and its telephone boxes are painted cream rather than red.
Q 07Wolverhampton's Princes Square saw which British first installed in 1927, commemorated today by striped poles?
Automatic traffic lights
Automatic traffic lights reached Princes Square 74 years before Wolverhampton finally became a city in 2001, after five failed bids.
Q 08Which seaside resort, home of the world's longest pleasure pier, became a city in 2022 in memory of MP Sir David Amess?
Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea's city status was a cause Amess had long campaigned for, and the Prime Minister announced the honour just days after the MP was killed.
Q 09Which Welsh city, the main coal-export port for the Rhondda valleys, was Roald Dahl's birthplace in 1916?
Cardiff
Cardiff's Llandaff district is where the young Roald Dahl and four friends hid a dead mouse in a sweet shop's jar, and his headmaster punished him for it.
Q 10Which UK city, birthplace of Narnia author C. S. Lewis, has a public square named in his honour?
Belfast
Belfast: Lewis was born there in 1898, and after his mother died he was sent away to boarding schools.
Q 11At which city's Iffley Road track did Roger Bannister run the first sub-four-minute mile on 6 May 1954?
Oxford
Oxford gave Bannister the mile record, but Australian John Landy broke it just six weeks later in Turku, Finland.
Q 12Which naval city, birthplace of Charles Dickens and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is the UK's only island city?
Portsmouth
Portsmouth's navy brought both fathers there: John Dickens was a Navy Pay Office clerk, and Marc Brunel was building block-making machinery.
Q 13Which Georgian spa city, known to the Romans as Aquae Sulis, joined UNESCO's Great Spa Towns of Europe listing in 2021?
Bath
Bath's Roman-era visitors left curse tablets in the sacred spring, asking the goddess Sulis to punish people who had stolen from them.
Q 21Which city, home of the Canaries football club, became England's first UNESCO City of Literature in 2012?
Norwich
Julian of Norwich wrote Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving book in English known to have been written by a woman.
Q 22In which Yorkshire city did Louis Le Prince shoot the earliest known moving pictures, Roundhay Garden Scene, in 1888?
Leeds
Leeds held Le Prince's workshop, but in September 1890, just before a planned New York demonstration, he boarded a train from Dijon to Paris and was never seen again.
Q 23Which Yorkshire wool city, birthplace of painter David Hockney, became the world's first UNESCO City of Film in 2009?
Bradford
Q 14Sheffield's Crucible Theatre has hosted which sporting event since 1977, alongside its stage plays?
World Snooker Championship
World Snooker Championship matches came to the Crucible after promoter Mike Watterson's wife saw a play there and suggested it as a venue.
Q 15Which bakery chain was founded, and still has its headquarters, in Newcastle upon Tyne?
Greggs
Greggs was founded by John Gregg in 1939 but only opened its first shop, on Gosforth High Street, in 1951.
Q 16Which Gunpowder Plot conspirator was born and educated in York, where he attended St Peter's School?
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes's school, St Peter's, also taught the brothers John and Christopher Wright, who later joined him in the Gunpowder Plot.
Q 17Which novelist, brought to Winchester for medical treatment by her sister Cassandra, died there on 18 July 1817?
Jane Austen
Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral, but her gravestone praises her character without ever mentioning her novels.
Q 18Which fighter aircraft did Supermarine design in Southampton, evolving from its Schneider Trophy seaplanes?
Spitfire
The Spitfire's Supermarine works at Woolston was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1940, during the Battle of Britain.
Q 19Which city, once 'the largest shipbuilding town in the world', has hosted Nissan's UK car factory since 1986?
Sunderland
Sunderland's last shipyard closed in 1988, just two years after the Nissan plant opened.
Q 20Which Welsh city, nicknamed Copperopolis for its copper-smelting heyday, was poet Dylan Thomas's birthplace in 1914?
Swansea
Swansea: Cornish copper ore was shipped there to be smelted, because the town sat beside cheap South Wales coal and had a harbour.
Bradford's wool trade drew so many German merchants that their warehouse quarter became known as Little Germany.
Q 24Which city, founded in 995 by monks carrying St Cuthbert's relics from the Vikings, was later ruled by prince bishops?
Durham
Durham's shrine of St Cuthbert drew pilgrims for centuries until Henry VIII ordered its destruction in 1538.
Q 25Which Scottish city, home of DC Thomson's Beano and Dandy comics, became the UK's first UNESCO City of Design in 2014?
Dundee
Dundee also built RRS Discovery, which carried Captain Scott to Antarctica and is berthed there today at Discovery Point.
Q 26Which city, the most northerly in the United Kingdom, was granted city status in 2000 as a 'Millennium City'?
Inverness
Inverness applied for city status in 1897 but was refused, partly because a grant would have exposed that existing cities had no formal charter.
Q 27Which city, whose Peace Bridge footbridge opened in 2011, was the inaugural UK City of Culture two years later?
Derry
Derry's Peace Bridge was built as a symbol of reconciliation, linking the Cityside and Waterside banks of the River Foyle.
Q 28Which club, formed in 1862, is recognised as the world's oldest professional football league club?
Notts County
Notts County predates the Football League by 26 years and was one of its 12 founding members in 1888.
Q 29Gloucester Cathedral, burial place of Edward II, was a filming location for which screen adaptation?
Harry Potter
Harry Potter scenes were shot in the church where nine-year-old Henry III was crowned in 1216 without the royal crown.
Q 30Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, has two cathedrals that are both named after which saint?
Patrick
Patrick's name went to two cathedrals because the Church of Ireland kept the medieval one at the Reformation, and Catholics built their own in the 19th century.