Population approximately 145,000

Darlington - Durham - Guisborough - Hartlepool - Middlesbrough - Redcar - Saltburn - Scarborough - Stockton - Whitby

Described by Prime Minister William Gladstone on his visit to the town in 1862 - "the youngest child of England's enterprise... but if an infant, an infant Hercules." Middlesbrough has grown tremendously since 1801 when just 25 people were recorded as living in the area covered today - that is until the Quakers of Darlington saw potential in the place and set about transforming it. Much of its history stems from coal, iron and steel production from the Victorian period when it established itself as a leader in world trade. This then continued for more than 100 years until the mid 1970s. At its height, the town attracted people from across Britain - and the globe - to work here in a bid to make their fortune. The area is also renowned for ship and bridge building, and it is impossible to ignore Middlesbrough's most famous landmark, the Transporter Bridge on the banks of the River Tees - the only working transporter bridge in England. The other famous bridge nearby is Newport Bridge, the first vertical lift bridge in Britain. Today though, the old industries have largely gone to be replaced by new, more comsumerised economies with less tradition in the region. But other town features which cannot be replaced so readily include the beautifully landscaped Albert Park, Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, the University of Teesside, Cleveland Centre and Captain Cook Square shopping centres. There are also plenty of pubs, clubs and a range of restaurants catering for all tastes, topped with various sports facilities - including the magnificent Riverside Stadium, the home of Boro Football Club. 

Middlesbrough is some 7 miles (11km) inland from the North Sea, on the south bank of the River Tees, at the head of its estuary and covers an area of 21 miles² (54 km²).  Middlesbrough came into being when Joseph Pease acquired land to develop a new coal-exporting port and the Stockton & Darlington Railway was extended to the site east of Stockton in 1830.  It was the first town in England to owe its existence to a railway.  The new town was constructed on a 32-acre site at the side of the new port.

The momentum, driven by the coal trade, was spectacularly reinforced after 1850 with the discovery of iron ore in the nearby Eston Beacon, and the ensuing blast-furnaces and ironworks poured into Middlesbrough and its neighbouring sites along the Redcar Railway (1846).  Primary metallurgy has left Middlesbrough for spacious estuary sites farther east, but Middlesbrough retains its important heavy engineering works.  Its dock (1843) still handles cargo, and the new lighter industries, including telephone equipment, have diversified its industrial employment.  As the industrial conurbation has extended, Middlesbrough has become the focus of its organization.

Additional roads and bridges have been built across the river at Middlesbrough (the latest in 1976), and the town has emerged as the commercial and cultural capital of Cleveland.  The shopping centre lies south of the old town of 1830, and Riverside Park occupies industrial sites in the former Ironmasters District.  Riverside Stadium, the new football & sports arena was added in 1995.

Langbaurgh-on-Tees

Area: 93 miles² (242 km²). Population: 142,000 estimated

Langbaurgh, on the south side of the River Tees runs between Middlesbrough and the rocky north-eastern coastline and then south along the coast past England's highest cliffs at Boulby, which rise more than 600 feet (180 m) from the North Sea. The name of Langbaurgh-on-Tees is taken from a division dating back 2,000 years to the Danish colonization.

The district includes modern steelworks at Lackenby and Redcar (British Steel Corporation) and petrochemical plants at Wilton (ICI), as well as older iron-making towns such as Grangetown and South Bank along the bay shoreline that was followed by the Redcar railway of 1846.  The estuary mudflats of the River Tees below Middlesbrough have been extensively reclaimed to provide spacious sites for industrial and port installations, which include an oil refinery and the new international port of Teesport.  Since 1977 oil has been received from the North Sea by direct pipeline.

The district is scenic.  The coastal resort of Saltburn-by-the- Sea and the inland market town of Guisborough are favoured residential towns.  To the south, Langbaurgh-on-Tees extends into the North York Moors National Park.

Cleveland County - England

Population 59,000 estimated

The county was created in 1974 and took the traditional district name derived from "cliff" land, which refers to the commanding escarpment that overlooks the Vale of Tees and continues south as a high rocky coastline. It has an area of 225 miles² (583km²) and is sub-divided into four administrative districts: Middlesbrough,  Langbaurgh, Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees, all of which have borough status.

Until the creation of the county borough of Teesside in 1968, the River Tees had been the county boundary between the historic counties of Durham and Yorkshire, all the way to the North Sea.  In the reorganization of 1974, when the new county was created, not only was the adjacent industrial port of Hartlepool included but also the conurbation absorbed adjacent rural areas in the Vale of Tees and in the Cleveland Hills, where its countryside extends to the picturesque National Park of the North York Moors.

Industry has grown since 1825 due to the railways, the port improvement of the estuary which was originally almost unnavigable, and the exploitation of the remarkable local resources of minerals that have become recognized successively since 1850.  The area now has one of the country's major concentrations of steel making, heavy chemicals, and, more recently, petrochemicals and petroleum refining.

Middlesbrough was founded in 1830 and is the first town ever to owe its existence to a railway. It has emerged as the capital of the region, challenged only by Stockton's retention of primacy as an agricultural market.

Captain James Cook, the navigator, was born at Marton in 1728, though he was apprenticed at Whitby the then district's leading port but which is now, sadly outside the county. Stuart Park, situated in Marton hosts the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum.

River Tees

The Tees Barrage (above)

It rises on Cross Fell in the northern Pennines and flows 70 miles (110 km) east to the North Sea. In its upper course it flows in a typical Pennines dale (valley) where high moorlands flank an attenuated strip of farmland. At Caldron Snout and High Force there are waterfalls where the river crosses the hard dolerite outcrop of the Whin Sill.

Below Middleton-in-Teesdale the valley broadens, and the river receives important right-bank tributaries, the Lune, the Balder, and the Greta, from subsidiary dales. Extensive tracts of the upper dales have been flooded to impound water for the needs of the industrial towns of Teesside. Below Barnard Castle the Tees meanders across a fertile clay plain to its estuary below Middlesbrough, where, until the 19th century, it entered the sea by shifting channels among extensive mud flats.

The torturous channel below Stockton has been straightened by artificial cuts, and large areas along the estuary shore have been reclaimed by dumping slag.  Until the 20th century, Stockton was the lowest bridging point, but there are now bridges at Middlesbrough.  Since 1825, when the Stockton and Darlington Railway was built and then extended to Middlesbrough in 1830, the river mouth, Teesside, has been the scene of large-scale industrial development and urbanization, associated with the coal trade, the iron and, later, the steel industry, heavy chemicals, and oil refining.

For further information contact Middlesbrough Tourist Information Centre on (01642) 243425.

Middlesboro USA 

Officially MIDDLESBOROUGH  - Bell county, Kentucky  Population  approximately 11,500

Perhaps the cause of so many miss-spellings of the original English town name is the United States city of Middlesboro - situated in a valley at the western end of the Cumberland Gap close to where the borders of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia converge.  Despite being on the old Wilderness Road through a natural pass in the mountains, the area was not settled until 1889.

It was developed by English investors as an iron and steel centre and named after Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire, England (Now Cleveland, UK).  Their company went bankrupt when the London bank Baring Brothers and Co. failed in 1893.  (Sound familiar?)

The city eventually recovered as a centre for the important eastern Kentucky coalfields.  Middlesboro is also a trade centre for tobacco and cattle.  Industries include tanning, food processing, and the manufacture of plastic pipe, elastic webbing, and mobile homes.  It is a tourist gateway to the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park to the east.  Kentucky Ridge State Forest is north, and Fern Lake, with a wild-game sanctuary, is south.

Darlington - Durham - Guisborough - Hartlepool - Middlesbrough - Redcar - Saltburn - Scarborough - Stockton - Whitby