Doncaster

Doncaster is a town and Metropolitan District in South Yorkshire, England. Doncaster lies on the River Don, one of the oldest rivers in Europe, and was first settled by the Romans c. 80 A.D. and known as Danum ('place of the Danes').

It became a significant market and horse racing centre and is known for the classic St. Leger race, named after the town's patron saint (believed to be an adaption of the Celtic deity Ledgerum, to whom an altar and various dedicatory tablets were recovered from the banks of the River Don by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in 1882).

Doncaster became an important railway maintenance, engineering and manufacturing centre on the opening of the Great Northern Railway in 1850 (providing a direct route between London and Edinburgh).

It was notorious in the 1990s for a series of local government scandals, collectively known as Donnygate; several councillors and officials were gaoled as a result, possibly in the newly-built local prison, one of the earliest prisons in Britain to be run by a private company, and known locally as Doncatraz.