The economic and population centre of gravity in England has always been towards the south just because of geography: it's where the bulk of the fertile land is. Most of the larger northern cities like Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool didn't develop until the Industrial Revolution, by which time the cathedral-building period is very much over. However, it wasn't like there were no cathedrals in the north - off the top of my head the magnificent cathedrals at Durham, Lincoln and my own dear York Minster, but also the less famous ones at Chester and Carlisle. Depending on how you define "North", there's Lichfield and Coventry too.

(Exactly what counts as "the North" is always a subject of some debate in England - this map is about right, though as a northerner myself I'd put Lincolnshire in the north rather the south.)

Other people can say more about patterns of patronage and so on, but I can say this. In the north the parish and diocesan system was much thinner on the ground. Parishes were much larger and systems like the church courts were much more skeletal, where they existed at all. The result was a much greater concentration of monasteries and chantry chapels for people to pray in than in the south. Then, when the reformation came all of the monasteries went (in 1536 for small houses and 1541 for large ones) and the chantries in 1545 and 1547. I'm sure in the aftermath of the reformation more churches and cathedrals were built, but as you say, people are less likely to have heard of them than the large ones in the south.