The name
Yarm is thought to be derived from the
Old English gearum, dative plural of
gear, 'pool for catching fish' (source of the modern dialect word
yair with the same meaning), hence 'at the place of the fish pools'. Yarm was first mentioned in the
Domesday Book of 1086, and was originally a
chapelry in the
Kirklevington parish in the
North Riding of Yorkshire; it later became a parish in its own right. The
Yarm helmet is a
Viking Age helmet that was found in Yarm. It is the first relatively complete
Anglo-Scandinavian helmet found in Britain and only the second Viking helmet discovered in north-west Europe. It is displayed nearby in
Preston Park Museum,
Preston-on-Tees.
Dominican Friars settled in Yarm about 1286, and maintained a friary and a hospital in the town, until 1583. Their memory is preserved in the names of Friarage and Spital Bank. The Friarage was built on top of the cellars of a Dominican friary in 1770, for the Meynell family. It is now at the centre of
Yarm School.
Bishop Skirlaw of
Durham built a stone bridge, which still stands, across the Tees in 1400. An iron replacement was built in 1805, but it fell down in 1806. For many years, Yarm was at the tidal limit and head of navigation on the
River Tees. On 1 February 1643, during the
First English Civil War, a small
Roundhead force attempted to halt the progress of a large waggon-train of arms, landed at
Tynemouth and destined to bolster the Royalist war effort in Yorkshire and beyond. Heavily outnumbered and outflanked by Royalist ford crossings, the Parliamentarians were quickly routed and the Royalists gained the bridge, crossing into Yorkshire. On 12 February 1821, at the
George & Dragon Inn, the meeting was held that pressed for the third and successful attempt for a Bill to give permission to build the
Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world's first public railway. In 1890, Bulmer & Co listed twelve
inns in Yarm: Black Bull, Cross Keys, Crown Inn, Fleece, George and Dragon, Green Tree, Ketton Ox, Lord Nelson, Red Lion, Three Tuns, Tom Brown, and Union. Also listed was Cross Keys beside the Leven Bridge. In the 13th century, Yarm was classed as a borough, but this status did not persist. It formed part of the
Stokesley Rural District under the
Local Government Act 1894, and remained so until 1 April 1974 when, under the
Local Government Act 1972, it became part of the
district of Stockton-on-Tees in the new non-metropolitan
county of Cleveland. Cleveland was abolished in 1996 under the
Banham Review, with Stockton-on-Tees becoming a
unitary authority. In January 2025, the Town Hall clock-winder, 76-year-old Graham Tebbs, retired after 32 years of manual clock-winding. The clock mechanism was now wound electrically. ==Geography==