JOSEPH PRIESTLEY (1733-1804), English chemist and Nonconformist minister, was born on the 13th of March 1733 at Fieldhead, a hamlet near Birstal in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
During his absence there was a general election, and he was returned (1847) for Stockport and for the West Riding of Yorkshire.
His father was rector of the parish: his grandfather and great-grandfather were merchants in the City of London, where their descendants for a long while continued to be influential people; his mother belonged to the family of Roundell, which had been settled for four centuries in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
In 1853 he was elected for Huddersfield, and in 1857 for the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The manufacturing districts of South Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire are traversed and connected by several canals following transverse valleys of the Pennine Chain.