History
The town of West Hartlepool was founded by Ralph Ward Jackson after having established the Stockton and Hartlepool Railway in 1839.
The area, having just one farm house in 1845, steadily grew into a center for shipping and railway transportation. The West Hartlepool Harbour and Dock (8 acres (0.032 km2)) opened on June 1, 1847. Five years later, also on June 1, the Jackson dock (14 acres (0.057 km2)) opened as well as a railway connecting West Hartlepool to Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. This allowed the shipping of coal and wool products east, and the shipping of fresh fish and raw fleeces west, and the area's population grew as a result. Eight shipbuilding yards were established. Supporting shipbuilding and repair were: a canvas manufacturing firm, Bastown Brothers and W. Taylor iron foundries, block and mast makers and other related machinery.
Streets were laid out along which shops and brick homes were built. Standard town services followed including paved roads, gas and electricity, sewers, a slaughterhouse, cemetery and more.
West Hartlepool was formed in 1854 by the Bishop of Durham. Swainson Dock opened on June 3, 1856, named after Ward Jackson’s father-in-law. In 1878 the William Gray & Company ship yard in West Hartlepool achieved the distinction of launching the largest tonnage of any shipyard in the world, a feat to be repeated on a number of occasions.
The municipal borough of West Hartlepool was created in 1887, and it was promoted in 1902 to be a county borough outside the control of Durham County Council. In 1967, a county borough, called Hartlepool, was established for both West Hartlepool and old Hartlepool, with the inclusion within the new area of local government of the parish of Seaton Carew on the coast to the south.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)