North-East History Tour

From A History of the County of Durham, Volume 3 (1928):- Its near neighbourhood to the port of Hartlepool produced in Hart an une...

On 7 th January 1971, in broad daylight, an Avro Vulcan XM610 Bomber soared across the skies of the North-East before crashing into a fi...

Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, is thought to have been born in Wingate, Co.Durham – probably, one can safely assume, in t...

The Castle Eden Beaker, now housed at the British Museum , is a classic example of what is commonly known as a ‘claw beaker’ – for ob...

© Copyright   Andrew Curtis   and licensed for   reuse   under this   Creative Commons Licence . Blackhall Beach.  The wasted...

Founded in 1948, the County Durham town of Peterlee is named after the famed miners’ leader of the same name, that is, Peter Lee.  But...

What does a historian make of a project designed to wipe all traces of industrial activity from a stretch of coastline in an attempt to ...

Ex-professional footballer Stan Anderson published an autobiography in 2010 entitled Captain of the North (see here ).   Never can a ...

Well, sort of, anyway.   The so-called ‘Yoden Village’, still shown on most modern-day maps a little to the north of Peterlee, certainly ...

Shotton Colliery was a nineteenth century ‘new town’, built a mile or so to the north-west of old Shotton village.   The pit was sunk and b...

28 th Sept 1844 – One of the most destructive explosions which ever occurred in the Durham coal field took place at Haswell colliery, the...

In days of old when hare coursing and hunting were a popular sport, the men of the area around Easington were constantly taunted by an ani...

© Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence . Seaton Holme, Easington, is one of the oldest do...

Where Hawthorn Dene and its Burn meet the sea can be found… … A small bay, called Hawthorn Hythe [Hive] …  sheltered by a reef or natur...

A newspaper cutting from the Northern Echo of 25 th June 1913, refers to an Inquest held following the death of John Gallagher, 31, a min...

  This lovely little effort didn’t exist pre-1820, nor is there any trace of it left today, amazingly enough.   Hawthorn Tower(s), origin...

This curious gazebo-like affair sits atop a lofty prominence overlooking the surrounding countryside a mile or two south of Seaham.   For ri...

So many of the North-East’s towns of today began life as tiny hamlets at the dawn of the nineteenth century, only to be transformed as pits ...

© Copyright  Brian Abbott  and licensed for  reuse  under this  Creative Commons Licence . This abandoned corner of the North-East has see...

© Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence Seemingly an early form of the modern-day village ...