Queen Elizabeth II: Remembering the Queen in Yorkshire

Queen Elizabeth II meets members of the public during a visit to the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds 2012

The Queen paid many visits to Yorkshire during her lifetime, forging a relationship with the region from the first year of her reign.

Horse racing was one of her great passions and in 1953 she travelled to watch her horse, Aureole, in the St Leger at Doncaster Racecourse.

Queen Elizabeth II, who owned many thoroughbreds, sat by Sir Winston Churchill as her horse lost the race.

When Royal Ascot came to York in 2005 the Queen was there for the event.

The five-day meeting was not held at the famous track in Berkshire for the first time as it was closed for redevelopment; instead 240,000 racegoers headed to York over five days.

William Derby, chief executive of York racecourse, said the event had taken two years of planning and they were determined it would be "the full works".

The Queen had "embraced the whole atmosphere, it was very much Yorkshire's Royal Ascot", he added.

On her first visit to the region in Doncaster in 1953

The Queen and Prince Philip on the fourth day of Royal Ascot 2005 at York Racecourse

During her reign, The Queen distributed Maundy money at all of Yorkshire's great churches, most recently to 178 pensioners at Sheffield Cathedral in April 2015.

She gave specially-minted currency to 89 men and 89 women - the same number as her age at the time - all from the Sheffield area.

The Right Reverend Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds and former Bishop of Bradford, who met the Queen on several occasions, said she was "very funny" and "very sharp with an incredible memory".

"I thought she was remarkable," he said.

"She took seriously her sense of duty to God and the people."

Giving out Royal Maundy money at Sheffield Cathedral in April 2015

The Queen also visited Fir Vale School in Sheffield in 2003

The Queen rarely made public statements but she broke with tradition in Leeds, when she opened the Royal Armouries before flag-waving crowds in 1996.

It was the day after the murder of 16 children in Dunblane, and she said she was shocked at the events in Scotland.

She greeted many well-wishers in Yorkshire during her reign, her final visit being to Richmond Castle in 2015.

Queen Elizabeth ll wears slippers and a garland during a visit to a temple in Bradford in 2007

The trip was to mark the formation of a new regiment, the Royal Lancers.

The late Dr Ingrid Roscoe, former Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, said The Queen was one of our great monarchs.

"I think as a monarch she will go down in history to being second only to Queen Elizabeth I," she said.

"I've always felt that good Queen Bess was the greatest Queen we've ever had because she gave us a sense of unity in changing times.

"I think this Queen will go down as being similar as a monarch."

The Queen with Princess Beatrice of York in York in 2012