 | Hartlepool: Encyclopedia II - Hartlepool - History
Hartlepool - History
Hartlepool was founded as a village in the 7th century AD, springing up around a convent founded in 640 on a headland overlooking a natural harbour. The convent became famous under St Hilda, who served as its abbess from 649-657, but it was destroyed by the Vikings in 800.
During the Middle Ages the village grew into an important (though still small) town, gaining a market and walls, and its harbour was improved to serve as the official port of the County palatine of Durham. Its harbour made it a convenient outlet for the coalfields of South Durham and in 1835 a railway was built to enable South Durham coal to be exported. A rival railway was built in 1847 and docks were established at its terminus, around which a new town, West Hartlepool, was founded.
The two communities grew very rapidly, from only a thousand at the start of the 19th century to a population of 64,000 in 1891. The modern town represents a joining together of "Old Hartlepool", locally known as the "headland", and West Hartlepool. What was West Hartlepool became the larger town and the two were formally joined in 1967. Today the term "West Hartlepool" is rarely heard outwith a sporting context, as a famous but rather unsuccessful Rugby Union team bears the name.
The area became heavily industrialised with an ironworks (established 1838) and shipyards in the docks (established in the 1870s). By 1913, no fewer than 42 ship-owning companies were located in the town, responsible for 235 ships. This made it a key target for Germany in the First World War. The first German offensive against Britain was mounted at Hartlepool between 8.10 and 9.30 am on the morning of 16 December 1914, when units of the Imperial German Navy bombarded Hartlepool, West Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough with a total of 1150 shells, killing 137 people and wounding 592. Two coastal defence batteries at Hartlepool returned fire, firing 143 shells, damaging three German ships including the battlecruiser SMS Blücher. An attempt by the German High Command to repeat the attack a month later led to the Battle of Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915.
Hartlepool suffered badly in the Great Depression of the 1930s and suffered high unemployment until the start of the Second World War, during which its shipbuilding and steelmaking industries enjoyed a renaissance. After the war, both industries went into a severe decline. The last ship to be constructed in Hartlepool left the slips in 1961. There was a boost to the retail sector in 1968 when Middleton Grange Shopping Centre was opened by Princess Anne, with over 140 new retail outlets including Marks & Spencer and Woolworths on the site of the old terraced streets that where bombed during the Second World War. By the 1980s the area was again severely affected by unemployment. A series of major investment projects in the 1990s revived the town centre with a new marina, rehabilitation of derelict land, the indoor conversion to modernise Middleton Grange Shopping Centre from the 1960s brutalist architecture and the construction of much new housing, which has led to the town becoming improbably chic in recent years. The town's Historic Quay is home to Britain's oldest warship still afloat, the frigate HMS Trincomalee, built in Bombay 1817.
The current boundaries date back to 1974, when under the Local Government Act 1972, the new non-metropolitan district of Hartlepool was created by adding part of Stockton Rural District to the county borough of Hartlepool.
Hartlepool Power Station is a advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) type nuclear power plant opened near Hartlepool in the 1980s.
The town is served by Hartlepool railway station.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
