After more than 2,000 years of industrial activity as a result of abundant minerals such as salt and coal, the
chemical industry of the Northeast England is today spread across the whole of the region, with
pharmaceuticals being primarily produced in the north of the region,
speciality and
fine chemicals spread across the middle of the region and
commodity chemicals and
petrochemicals on Teesside. These companies are members of the
Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC). The early chemical industry in this region, however, was primarily Tyneside based and associated with the manufacture of soap and glass. The most important chemical activity in the 18th and 19th centuries was the manufacture of alkali to make soap, which was when mixed with lime and sand and used to make glass. The effects of the industrial revolution could be seen through an economy dominated by iron and steel, coal mining and shipbuilding. Rationalisation of chemical firms in 1891 left only four works on Tyneside. By 1828 the alkali works had a large problem controlling emissions of
hydrochloric acid fumes which devastated the neighbouring countryside. One solution was to build tall chimneys to drive the fumes further away and in 1833 the tallest chimney in England was built at the Friars Goose Alkali Works. The passing of the
Alkali Act 1863 in the UK Parliament brought about a further reduced pollution from these processes and was the first industrial environmental legislation to come into practice globally.
Salt making Salt-making in and around
Greatham (between Hartlepool and Billingham) had been important in Roman and medieval times, and salt was also produced on Wearside from the 1580s, but by the 16th century the industry had been eclipsed by South Shields on the Tyne. In 1894 the industry returned to Greatham with the establishment of the Greatham Salt and Brine Company by George Weddell. The works was later purchased by the famous salt-making company
Cerebos in 1903. By the mid-20th century, Cerebos was owned by the food conglomerate
Rank Hovis McDougall, and the factory closed in 2002.
Glass Glass manufacture has been an important industry in the Northeast of England since stained glass glaziers worked on the Wearmouth and Jarrow monasteries in 674 AD.
Sunderland and Tyneside were noted for glass-making between the 17th and 19th centuries. In 1827 about two fifths of all English glass was made in the Tyneside area and in 1845 South Shields was making more plate glass than anywhere else in England. Sunderland was also rising to prominence as a glass-making centre, with James Hartley's
Wear Glass Works opening in 1836, and by 1865 one third of the sheet glass in England was supplied by his Sunderland works. The Candlish Glass Bottleworks was the largest in Europe, managed by
John Candlish William Beilby produced decorative glass items in Newcastle during the mid 1700s.
Coal mining Coal mining was one of the first industrial activities in Northeast England because the region was fortunate to have shallow seams of coal near the coast, which meant that material could be transported in and out by sea. This led to the growth of ports in Sunderland, Newcastle,
Teesport Middlesbrough,
Seaham,
Hartlepool and
Blyth. The energy from coal underpinned the development of many of the industries around these ports. As discussed in the classic historical review of "Victorian Cities" by
Asa Briggs, Middlesbrough was developed as a port downstream of
Yarm and Stockton to take bigger coal ships. The Northumberland-Durham coalfield was one of the earliest coal mining areas to be worked in the country, with the Romans extracting coal here which caused the area to become an important source of coal in the 13th and 14th centuries. Many current towns and villages across the region were originally settlements set up for the coal miners. For example, Seaham is a port community that was developed to handle output of the coal mining interests of Charles William Vane-Tempest-Stewart the 3rd
Marquis of Londonderry, a military leader and business man who became one of the UK's richest men due to his coal mining developments. The Marquis built his business interests using the inherited wealth of his wife Francis Anne. The Marquis also built
Wynyard Hall, one of the country's finest country houses in the region as a palace for his family and his royal connections. London was one of the places which received coal from the area and there are references to shipments of coal being sent to the capital, for example 526 cauldrons of coal from Tyneside to London in 1376 for smiths involved in building Windsor Castle. Before the growth of mining companies, the coal from the North East was often sent to London using monks. The coal was often called sea coal because it often washed up from undersea outcrops on the Northumbrian coast. This could explain the name Se-coles Lane in London. Other mining developments from this region include water level and ventilation techniques introduced by John Buddle who also helped to introduce the
miner's safety lamp which was invented here by
Stephenson and
Davy. Sir Humphry Davy, after contemplating a communication he had received from Reverend Dr
Robert Gray Rector of
Bishopwearmouth (later Bishop of Bristol) regarding the problem of gas in mines, took up the challenge of solving the problem of providing light in "
fire-damp" ridden collieries. He started the work with several days of discussions with John Buddle, the overseer at Wallsend Colliery, other colliery owners and finally the Reverend John Hodgson, Vicar of Jarrow. Davy also collected samples of "fire-damp" before returning to his laboratory in London. Two designs of his lamps emerged and were tested at the most hazardous pits in the country, then at Newcastle-upon- Tyne and
Whitehaven in
Cumberland, and were a resounding success. He later published his paper on "The safety lamp for coal mines and some researches on flame" in 1818, which made underground coal mines much more safe. George Stephenson a colliery engineer at Killingworth Main Colliery also invented a safety lamp which was successfully tested on 21 October 1815. This became known as the "Geordie" lamp. As a result, some in the Northeast then tried to challenge the delivery of some Ceremonial Plate to Davy but the Davy Lamper's won the day and on 25 September 1817 a dinner service as presented to Davy from the coal owners at the Queen's Head in Newcastle. Davy declined to take out a patent on his lamp design effectively giving it to the nation and the world's coal miners. The moment when the new safety lamp was first tested was recorded by John Buddle in a report from the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines on 4 September 1835 "I first tried the lamp in an explosive mixture on the surface; and then took it to the mine; it is impossible for me to express my feelings at the time when I first suspended the lamp in the mine and saw it red hot. I said to those around me: "We have at last subdued this monster [fire-damp]." With some describing it as one of the most significant moments in the industrialization of the world." As an example of the many coal mines (colloquially known as pits) that were created in the Northeast's Monkwearmouth Colliery (or Wearmouth Colliery) was a large deep pit that went out under the
North Sea. It was located on the north bank of the
River Wear and was the largest pit in Sunderland and one of the most important in
County Durham. The mine opened in 1835 and was the last to remain operating in the Durham Coalfield, with the last shift leaving the pit on 10 December 1993 and ending over 800 years of commercial underground coal mining in the region. The Colliery site has been cleared to make way for the Sunderland A.F.C's
Stadium of Light which opened in July 1997. The mine is commemorated by a large sculpture of a miners lamp at the entrance to the stadium. The
Durham Coalfield remains a national resource for the UK economy today and for the future. Most of the mines in the region were closed during the years of UK Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher (see
UK miners' strike (1984–1985)) however several large open cast coal mines are still operational in the region. Today companies like Five-Quarter are investigating the use of the latest technology for underground
coal gasification to access the Durham Coalfield reserves. Professor Paul Younger of
Newcastle University in 2011 reported that "Around 75 per cent of the coal in the North East is still underground, even though we have been mining it on an industrial scale longer than anyone else in the world. Previously a lot of this coal was too deep for conventional mining, or too far off shore. Even today this resource could never be exploited by conventional means, but the technology to harness that resource has now become cost effective." Accessing these reserves is of particular importance to the local chemical industry.
Shipbuilding Shipbuilding was once one of this region's largest industrial sectors. Ships were built on the
River Wear at Sunderland from at least 1346 and on the
River Tees at Stockton from at least 1470, with the Northeast of England more generally being the birthplace of some of the world's greatest vessels. This was recognised in 2013 with the regions shipbuilding heritage and global impact being recognized by
UNESCO and placed on their
Memory of the World Register, ranking the regions shipbuilding heritage alongside iconic items such as the Domesday Book in terms of historical importance.
Wood to iron and steel The early ships were built of wood, but in the 19th century there was a move towards building ships of iron then steel. Ships were built across the region, especially along
Tyneside in Jarrow and
Wearside in Sunderland and also in smaller ports like Blyth,
Whitby and Hartlepool. Sunderland's early development was due to coal but it later transitioned to become the largest shipbuilding town in the world giving the town its fame. The first recorded shipbuilder was Thomas Menville at
Hendon in 1346. By 1790 Sunderland was building around nineteen ships per year making it the most important shipbuilding centre in the United Kingdom. By 1840 there were 65 shipyards such that over 150 wooden vessels were built at Sunderland in 1850. At this time 2,025 shipwrights worked in the town and some 2,000 others were employed in related industries. Sunderland's first iron ships were built from 1852 and wooden shipbuilding ceased here in 1876. Sunderland shipbuilders included Austin and Son, William Pickersgill and William Doxford. An archive of the ships built on Teesside has been created, In Hartlepool Thomas Richardson of Castle Eden and John Parkin of Sunderland established a shipyard at Old Hartlepool in 1835 and built The Castle Eden ship. The shipbuilding company of William Gray was established here in 1862 and Gray became one of the most influential men in the town. He was the first mayor of West Hartlepool in 1887. William Gray shipbuilders won the Blue Ribband prize for maximum output in 1878, 1882, 1888, 1895, 1898 and 1900. The yard closed in 1961. On Tyneside,
Charles Mark Palmer, born in
South Shields, established a yard at Jarrow in 1851 and built its first iron collier,
The John Bowes, in the following year. It was the first ever seagoing screw collier and was built for John Bowes of Barnard Castle for shipping coal to London. Palmer was also famed for building the first rolled armour plates for
warships in 1854. William Smith and Co launched the 1,600-ton
Blenheim in 1848. W. G. Armstrong, the northern engineer, acquired an interest in the Tyneside shipbuilding firm of Mitchells in 1882, and the company of
W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell and Co was formed. The yard built
battleships as well as a ship called
Gluckauf, which was arguably the world's first oil tanker. It was
launched by the yard in 1886. Scotsman Charles Mitchell started building ships at Walker-on-Tyne in 1852 and purchased a site at
Wallsend in 1873 to soak up excess orders from his Walker shipyard. The new yard failed financially and was handed to his brother-in-law Charles Swan. Charles and his brother Henry were directors of the Wallsend Slipway Company, a repair yard established by Mitchell in 1871. In 1878 Charles arranged a partnership with Sunderland shipbuilder George Hunter, but in 1879 Charles died after falling overboard from a channel steamer whilst returning from the Continent with his wife. Hunter went into temporary partnership with Swan's wife before becoming managing director in 1880.
Swan Hunters built their first steel ship at Wallsend in 1884 and their first oil tanker in 1889. Most early ships built at the Swan Hunter yard were smaller, like colliers and barges, but in 1898 it built its first
ocean liner,
Ultonia, with a further 21 liners being built between 1898 and 1903. The most famous ship ever launched there was undoubtedly , a transatlantic ocean liner that launched on 20 September 1906. The ship was long, with a
Beam (nautical) of 88 ft (27 m) and a
gross register tonnage of 31,938 tons. It carried 2,000 passengers on its maiden voyage on 16 November 1907 and won the
Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, a record held for 22 years.
20th-century decline Shipyard closures in the 20th century took place during economic slumps and occurred in two phases, between 1909–1933 and 1960–1993. Early closures included Smiths Dock at
North Shields in 1909, which became a ship repair yard, Armstrongs of Elswick in 1921, Richardson Duck of Stockton (1925), Priestman's of Sunderland (1933) and Palmers of Jarrow and
Hebburn (1933). There were 28 North East closures in this period of which 14 were on the Tyne, 7 on the Wear, 6 on the Tees and 1 at Hartlepool. Six shipyards closed in the 1960s including W.Gray of Hartlepool (1961), Short Brothers of Sunderland (1964) and The Blyth Shipbuilding Company (1966). There were five closures in the region in the 1970s including the Furness yard at Haverton Hill, near Stockton, in 1979. As with the rest of the region, Sunderland suffered economic decline during the last century, but is now becoming an important area for
quaternary industry, bioscience, computing and
high tech industries. The economy of Sunderland is now dominated by the
Nissan's European car manufacturing facility and supply chain which is also leading that company's development of
electric vehicles. The economy of Teesside continues to be largely based on the
petrochemical,
commodity chemical and
steel industries that form a significant part of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC), but newer industries such as offshore engineering and
digital computing, particularly in the field of
Game design, have emerged from Teesside University.
Northumberland, although largely rural and an important tourist location with its castles, beaches, and history has a nationally significant concentration of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies around Cramlington and Prudhoe. The county has also seen a huge investment into the creation of the UKs largest reservoir,
Kielder Water, enabling the Northeast to attract more industry. Kielder forest around the reservoir is known to have the darkest night sky in England, making it an ideal location for both professional and amateur astronomers. The
City of Durham with its highly regarded
University, Castle and Cathedral attracts many tourists and also a significant number of knowledge intensive businesses (KIBS) in architecture, engineering, technology and measurement science. At
Sedgefield in County Durham,
NETPark is home to the Centre for Process Innovation's
Printable Electronics Technology Centre, a nationally important centre for the development of
printed electronics and a number of other emerging electronics companies such as Kromek. Today, the members of the
Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) represent about one third of the regional industrial economy. The NEPIC is constituted by commodity chemical,
petrochemical,
speciality chemical,
pharmaceutical,
biotechnology,
polymer,
renewable material and
renewable energy companies and the associated supply chains. The Teesside industry is located on three large chemical sites at
Wilton,
Billingham and
Seal Sands at the mouth of the River Tees and
Teesport, the third largest port in the UK and the tenth in Western Europe and is important logistical infrastructure supporting the commodity chemical and steel members of NEPIC. In the 21st century
PD Ports, owners of Teesport, have been developing it as a Port Centric Logistical Centre. This strategy has seen a number of significant importing and distribution facilities for the north of the UK being built here, including distribution centres for the distribution operations of Asda/Walmart and Tesco supermarket chains. NEPIC has two offices in the region: one in the north in Sunderland, serving the pharmaceutical and speciality chemical industries on Tyneside and in south Northumberland, and one in the south at
Wilton near Redcar, serving the commodity chemical and steel industry of Teesside and operating amongst several process sector and supply chain companies that work out of the process industry research centre, The Wilton Centre, one of Europe's largest technical development laboratory facilities. The head office of the
Centre for Process Innovation, part of the UK's
High Value Manufacturing Catapult, is based in this multi-occupancy technical development centre along with their pioneering National Industrial Biotechnology Facility.
Innovations This region has a strong history in technological innovation: The
friction match was invented in Stockton-on-Tees in 1826 by
John Walker.
George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. Renowned as the father of railways, George Stephenson was born in Wylam, Northumberland, 9.3 miles (15.0 km) west of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was a British physicist and chemist from Sunderland, County Durham now the (City of Sunderland). He is most famous for inventing an
incandescent light bulb before its invention by the American
Thomas Edison. Swan first demonstrated the light bulb at a lecture the
Literary and Philosophical Society and Miners Institute on
Mosley Street, Newcastle upon Tyne on 18 December 1878. Mosley Street, Newcastle upon Tyne is reputed to be the first street in the world to be lit by
electric light.
Charles Algernon Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and having foreseen its potential to power ships he set up the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company with five associates in 1893. To develop this he had the experimental vessel built in a light design of steel by the firm of Brown and Hood, based at
Wallsend on Tyne. He also pioneered in the field of
electricity generation, establishing the
Newcastle and District Electric Lighting Company in 1889. The company opened the first power station in the world to generate electricity using
turbo generators in 1890, at
Forth Banks in Newcastle.
William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, CB, FRS (26 November 1810 – 27 December 1900) was an effective Tyneside industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing empire. He was responsible for the development of the hydraulic crane and many military armaments. His house at
Cragside, Northumberland was the first in the world to be lit by
hydro-electricity, using
incandescent lamps provided by the inventor
Joseph Swan. In 1936 the first commercially viable production of acrylic safety glass,
Perspex, began by ICI Acrylics and the material is still manufactured in the region by
Lucite International now part of
Mitsubishi Corporation. During the Second World War acrylic glass was used for submarine periscopes, windshields, canopies, and gun turrets for airplanes. Shortages in raw materials and price pressures have led to innovation by Lucite who developed their patented Alpha Technology in this region. This technology is now the leading technology used in the manufacture of acrylics around the world. It uses new feedstock's and has a cost advantage of 40% over conventional processing methods.
Newcastle University was the first in the UK and the second in Europe to receive a licence to perform research on stem cells and is a leading centre for such research today. Dr
Karim Nayernia was the first to isolate spermatogonial stem cells at this University. Many new healthcare developments have arisen from this stem cell expertise in the region. Today, the region has five universities with a number of research departments:
Durham University, Newcastle University,
Northumbria University,
University of Sunderland and Teesside University, which have a portfolio of many innovative businesses that have spun out of their research and teaching departments. == Sport ==