East Riding of Yorkshire
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40 free East Riding of Yorkshire trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The East Riding of Yorkshire runs from the rolling Wolds down to the flat farmland of Holderness and a North Sea coast that never stays still. It takes in the port city of Hull, old boroughs such as Hedon, estate villages such as Sproatley, and a string of seaside resorts. This quiz covers the county's geography, history and famous names, along with its railways: the stations on the Hull to Scarborough line, the closed Hull to Withernsea branch that once served Hedon, and towns with stations elsewhere in the East Riding. Expect stately homes, sea battles, record-breaking engineering and a few local oddities. It suits anyone who lives in or visits East Yorkshire, pub quiz setters who want a local round, and rail enthusiasts. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1851 novel describes a skeleton Sir Clifford Constable kept at Burton Constable Hall near Sproatley?
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick devotes a passage to Sir Clifford Constable's sperm whale, which stranded at nearby Tunstall in 1825. As lord of the Holderness foreshore, he could claim whatever washed up.
Q 02The 'Riding' in East Riding of Yorkshire comes from an Old Norse word with which meaning?
A third part
A third part is what the Old Norse word meant, because Viking-age Yorkshire was divided into East, North and West. That is why Yorkshire never had a South Riding outside fiction.
Q 03Which Hull-born aviator came home to Hedon aerodrome in 1930 after flying solo to Australia?
Amy Johnson
Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, and her triumphant homecoming began on Hedon's airfield, which had been a racecourse until 1909.
Q 04Hull is known for telephone boxes painted which colour instead of the usual British red?
Cream
Cream kiosks mark Hull as the only place in the UK not served by BT. The city's council-founded phone company was never absorbed into the Post Office network.
Q 05Which East Riding resort on the Hull to Scarborough line is nicknamed the 'Lobster Capital of Europe'?
Bridlington
Bridlington lands more than 300 tonnes of lobster a year, which makes its harbour the largest lobster port in Europe. Much of the catch is exported to France, Spain and Italy.
Q 06The clay cliffs of the Holderness coast in the East Riding suffer Europe's highest rate of what?
Coastal erosion
Coastal erosion is so rapid here because the cliffs are soft glacial boulder clay facing long North Sea waves. Dozens of Holderness towns and villages have vanished into the sea.
Q 07The Humber Bridge, opened in 1981, held which world record for its first 17 years?
Longest single suspension span
The longest single suspension span in the world belonged to the Humber Bridge until Japan's Akashi Kaikyo Bridge opened in 1998. Its 1,410-metre centre span is still the longest in Britain.
Q 08What kind of building stands inland in the middle of Withernsea and now houses a Kay Kendall museum?
A lighthouse
A lighthouse 127 feet tall rises among Withernsea's houses; when it was built in the 1890s only sand dunes lay between it and the sea. Its light went out in 1976.
Q 09Which Norwegian king was killed fighting Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge in the East Riding in 1066?
Harald Hardrada
Harald Hardrada fell at Stamford Bridge after the English army marched from London in four days and caught him by surprise. Within weeks the victor himself lay dead at Hastings.
Q 10Which county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire is known for its Gothic minster and its racecourse?
Beverley
Beverley grew around a monastery founded about 700 by John of Beverley, whose remains still lie in a vault beneath the minster's nave.
Q 11Which Hull-born MP, a pupil at Pocklington School, led Parliament's campaign against the slave trade?
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce headed the campaign for 20 years until the Slave Trade Act of 1807. His birthplace in Hull has been a museum in his memory since 1906.
Q 12Which East Riding town on the River Ouse has the United Kingdom's furthest inland port?
Goole
Goole lies about 50 miles from the North Sea and was a brand-new canal company town of some 450 people when its docks opened in 1826. Its Tom Pudding tub boats each carried about 40 tons of coal.
Q 13Bempton Cliffs in the East Riding hold England's only mainland breeding colony of which seabird?
Gannet
Q 21Which town stands at the northern end of the Humber Bridge and starts the Yorkshire Wolds Way?
Hessle
Hessle faces Barton-upon-Humber across the estuary, and the old quarries beside its bridge tower were turned into a country park once the crossing was built.
Q 22Which sand spit at the mouth of the Humber became a tidal island after a 2013 storm surge?
Spurn Head
Spurn Head has been reachable only on foot since the December 2013 surge wrecked its road, and the narrowest stretch of sand now floods at each high tide.
Q 23Off which Yorkshire headland did American captain John Paul Jones win a famous sea battle in 1779?
Flamborough Head
Gannet crowds are the headline act at the RSPB reserve, but its puffins are the oddity: they nest in rock crevices there, while those at most British sites dig burrows.
Q 14Which Bradford-born artist painted 'Bigger Trees Near Warter', a vast East Riding landscape?
David Hockney
David Hockney built the picture from 50 canvases painted outdoors, and at about 12 metres wide it is the largest painting he ever completed. He gave it to the Tate in 2008.
Q 15Hull City's black and amber striped shirts gave the football club which nickname?
The Tigers
The Tigers reached the Premier League for the first time in 2008 by beating Bristol City in the play-off final.
Q 16Hull held which title in 2017, when the Turner Prize came to its Ferens Art Gallery?
UK City of Culture
UK City of Culture went to Hull after it beat Dundee, Leicester and Swansea Bay on the final shortlist of four.
Q 17Which Hull aquarium, designed by Terry Farrell, stands where the River Hull meets the Humber estuary?
The Deep
The Deep holds 2.5 million litres of water and 87 tonnes of salt at Sammy's Point. About half the money to build it came from the Millennium Commission.
Q 18Which landscape designer laid out the lakes and park of Burton Constable Hall, next to Sproatley?
Capability Brown
Capability Brown joined the ponds into two lakes and added a ha-ha, and the estate steward wrote down his directions visit by visit, a record that still survives.
Q 19Passenger trains on the Hull to Withernsea line through Hedon ended in 1964 under which closure programme?
The Beeching cuts
The Beeching cuts closed a line that had created its own destination: three years before the railway opened in 1854, Withernsea was a village of just 109 people.
Q 20The Yorkshire Wolds are the northernmost hills in Great Britain formed of which rock?
Chalk
Chalk gives the Wolds their white sea cliffs and feeds the Gypsey Race, the northernmost stream of its kind in Europe.
Flamborough Head watched Jones capture the frigate HMS Serapis, then lose his own battered flagship, Bonhomme Richard, which sank soon afterwards.
Q 24Which market town on the Hull to Scarborough line is known as the 'Capital of the Wolds'?
Driffield
Driffield earned the title by sitting near the centre of the Wolds, and the River Hull begins as springs just outside the town.
Q 25Which seaside town beside Yorkshire's largest freshwater lake ends the Trans Pennine Trail?
Hornsea
Hornsea is reached along the bed of its closed branch railway from Hull, the last leg of the coast-to-coast path from Southport. The town also gave its name to a well-known pottery.
Q 26Burnby Hall Gardens in Pocklington hold the United Kingdom's national collection of which plants?
Water lilies
Water lilies cover the two lakes that Major Stewart left to the town, forming the largest such collection in a natural setting in Europe.
Q 27Hull to Scarborough line trains start from which Hull station, now joined to the city's bus station?
Paragon
Paragon opened in 1848 as Hull Paragon Street, and from the 1860s the Holderness branch trains through Hedon ended their journeys there as well.
Q 28Which first stop north of Hull on the Hull to Scarborough line claims to be England's largest village?
Cottingham
Cottingham is one of several places that claim the title, and its station, opened in 1846, now mostly carries commuters from Hull's northern suburbs.
Q 29Which poet, a University of Hull librarian for 30 years, has a statue at Hull's main railway station?
Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin's statue was unveiled in 2010, on the 25th anniversary of his death, in a year when Hull also scattered 40 giant decorated toads around its streets in his honour.
Q 30Which future king landed at the lost port of Ravenspurn in 1399 to take the throne from Richard II?
Henry IV
Henry IV came ashore as the exiled Henry Bolingbroke, a landing Shakespeare worked into Richard II. Edward IV used the same harbour in 1471, and the town now lies beneath the North Sea.