| Hebburn | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Aerial view of the centre | |
  Hebburn Location withinTyne and Wear | |
| Population | 21,345 (Built up area, 2021)[1] |
| OS grid reference | NZ318645 |
| Metropolitan borough | |
| Metropolitan county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | HEBBURN |
| Postcode district | NE31 |
| Dialling code | 0191 |
| Police | Northumbria |
| Fire | Tyne and Wear |
| Ambulance | North East |
| UK Parliament | |
| |
Hebburn is a town in theSouth Tyneside borough ofTyne and Wear, England. It was historically inCounty Durham and became part of Tyne and Wear in 1974. It is on the south bank of theRiver Tyne betweenGateshead andJarrow and oppositeWallsend andWalker. At the2021 census the Hebburn built up area as defined by theOffice for National Statistics had a population of 21,345.
In Saxon times Hebburn was a small fishing hamlet upon the river Tyne.[2] It is thought that the name Hebburn may be derived from theOld English terms,heah meaning "high", andbyrgen meaning a "burial mound", though it could also meanthe high place beside the water. The first record of Hebburn mentions a settlement of fishermen's huts in the 8th century, which were burned by theVikings.
In the 14th century, the landscape was dominated by apeel tower. A 4-foot-6-inch-tall (137-centimetre) wall, a portion of which still remains at St. John's Church, could also be seen.[3] The Lordship of the Manor of Hebburn passed through the hands of a number of families during theMiddle Ages, including the Hodgsons of Hebburn (James 1974,Hodgson).
In the early 1600s, the wealthy Newcastle family, the Ellisons, acquired the land of Hebburn.[2] Coal was mined at Hebburn as early as the 17th century. In 1792 the Ellisons received royalties from coal mining expansion[2] when Hebburn Colliery opened. The colliery eventually operated three pits. In 1786 the Ellisons’ Hebburn estate also made income from dumping ships ballast at Hebburn Quay.[2] By the 1800s the Ellison family had expanded Hebburn Manor into theirHebburn Hall estate.[2] Hebburn Colliery played an important role in the investigations into the development of mine safety, following the mining disaster at Felling Colliery in 1812.
Humphry Davy stayed withCuthbert Ellison at Hebburn Hall in 1815 and took samples of the explosivemethane 'fire damp' gas from the Hebburn mine which were taken to London in wine bottles for experiments into the development of a miners' safety lamp. Davy's lamps were tested in the Hebburn mine and remarkably the gauze that protected the naked flames could actually absorb the fire damp so that the lamps could shine more effectively.[4]
In 1853, Andrew Leslie arrived fromAberdeen,Scotland. He expanded the Ellison estate, further, with shipbuilding,[2] and in 200 years of industrialisation, Hebburn grew into a modern town of 20,000 inhabitants.[2] When the railways arrived in Hebburn in 1872, further growth took off in the Ellison estate, with the growth of the brick, metal and chemical industries.[2]
Andrew Leslie's shipyard launched two hundred and fifty-five ships before 1885.[5] In 1885 the shipyard merged with local locomotive builder W Hawthorne, and then changed its name toHawthorn Leslie and Company, and grew even more.[5]
Hebburn also hosted its own Highland Games, with the first one being held in 1883, which were usually held annually in July or August, spanning over three decades and with professional sportsmen coming from Scotland and as far asOban to compete.
In 1901, Alphonse Reyrolle's, Reyrolle Electrical Switchgear Company opened.[2][5] In 1932 Hebburn colliery closed. 200 miners were killed during the life of the colliery.[6] The youngest were 10 years old. In 1936Monkton Coke Works was built by the Government, in response to theJarrow Hunger March in 1932.[7]
In theSecond World War, theBattle of Britain occurred in 1940, and Hitler had planned an amphibious attack that was predicated on defeating the RAF in the battle. Hitler's planned first wave of attack, in hisOperation Sea Lion plan, was to try and captureAberdeen and Newcastle. Hitler's Operation Sea Lion documents had detailed plans to capture the Reyrolle Electrical Switchgear Company.[8]
Hawthorn Leslie built everything from liners to tankers.[4] ManyRoyal Navy battleships were built atHawthorn Leslie shipyard. In WWII the yard built 41 naval vessels and repaired another 120.[4] In 1944, the yard also built D-day landing craft, including theLanding Craft Tank (LCT) 7074.[9] In April 2020, the craft was housed in theD-Day Story museum.[9] In 2020, the boat was only one of ten craft of its kind to survive postwar.[9]
One ship built at the shipyard wasHMSKelly,[10] launched in 1938 and commanded byLord Louis Mountbatten.[11] The ship, a K-Class destroyer, was commissioned just eleven days before WWII.[11] The ship was hit three times. In December 1939, she was damaged by a German mine not far from the river Tyne.[11] On 9 May 1940, she was torpedoed off Norway with the loss of 27 lives.[11] Badly damaged, she crawled back to Hawthorn Leslie on a 92-hour journey to be repaired.[4] In 1941, HMSKelly was sunk offCrete.[4] One hundred and thirty men were killed in the disaster and they are remembered in memorials at Hebburn Cemetery,[11] which were erected by surviving members of the crew and workers from Hawthorn Leslie.[11] The ship's story forms the basis of the 1942 filmIn Which We Serve.[4] The shipyard is now owned byA&P Group but lies vacant.
The Monkton Coke Works plant closed in 1990, and was demolished in 1992.[7] The former British Short-Circuit Testing Station in Victoria Road West within the town, owned byA. Reyrolle & Company provided the backdrop for theGary Numan video "Metal". The facility was demolished in 2011.[12]
In 2012, the BBC commissioned a television seriesHebburn to be set in the town. It was created and co-written byJason Cook, who was raised in Hebburn.[13] The first episode was broadcast on 18 October 2012.[14][15]
4th Battalion theParachute Regiment and23 SAS Reserves have bases in Hebburn.[16] The Air Cadets have a unit located at Hebburn TA Centre.[17]
Hebburn has anecology centre powered bywind turbines. It is the location of ashipyard, operated byA&P Group.[18]
There are is one main tier of local government covering Hebburn, atmetropolitan borough level:South Tyneside Council. The council is a member of theNorth East Combined Authority, led by the directly electedMayor of the North East. For national elections, the town forms part of theJarrow and Gateshead East constituency.[19]
Hebburn historically formed part of theancient parish ofJarrow in theChester Ward of County Durham.[20] The parish was subdivided into seventownships:Harton, Hedworth,Heworth,Monkton,South Shields,Westoe, and a Jarrow township which covered both the settlement of Jarrow itself and Hebburn.[21] The four townships of Harton, Heworth, South Shields, and Westoe each took on civil functions under thepoor laws from the 17th century onwards. They therefore each becamecivil parishes in 1866 when the legal definition of 'parish' was changed to be the areas used for administering the poor laws. The other three townships jointly administered their poor law functions and so became a single civil parish called "Hedworth Monkton and Jarrow".[22]
In 1873, the western part of that parish was made the Hebburnlocal government district, which was then administered by an elected local board. Such districts were reconstituted asurban districts under theLocal Government Act 1894.[23] The 1894 Act also directed that civil parishes could no longer straddle borough or district boundaries, and so a new civil parish of Hebburn was created, matching the urban district.[24]
The urban district council adopted the Ellison family crest as its coat of arms.[25] The council was based at offices on Argyle Street until 1967 when it moved to a new civic centre on Campbell Park Road.[26]
Hebburn Urban District was abolished in 1974 to become part of the new metropolitan borough of South Tyneside in the newmetropolitan county of Tyne and Wear. Hebburn Civic Centre was used as an area office for South Tyneside Council (which has its headquarters in South Shields) for some years, but closed and was demolished in 2016 to make way for a residential development.[27]
Hebburn has two secondary schools:St Joseph's Catholic Academy (formerly St Joseph's Comprehensive School) andHebburn Comprehensive School.[28]
Hebburn Town F.C., formed in 1912,[29] and Hebburn Reyrolle F.C. are the town's local non-leaguefootball teams.Hebburn Argyle, which existed in the early 1900s, reformed several years ago as a youth club.
Athletics is also catered for atMonkton Stadium, home of Jarrow and Hebburn Athletic Club,[30] whereBrendan Foster,Steve Cram andDavid Sharpe are notable past runners.
A short livedgreyhound racing track was opened in 1945. The plans to build the track were passed in September 1944 and it cost £30,000 to construct a venue that could accommodate 6,000 people. The racing was independent (not affiliated to the sports governing body theNational Greyhound Racing Club) and was known as a flapping track, which was the nickname given to independent tracks.[31] The track was trading in 1947 but it is not known when it closed.[32]
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Hebburn Metro station is a stop on theTyne and Wear Metro. It is situated between Jarrow and Pelaw station. The Yellow line serves stations betweenSouth Shields,Newcastle Central,Whitley Bay andSt James.[33]
The nearestNational Rail station is atHeworth, which is a stop on theDurham Coast Line betweenNewcastle,Sunderland,Hartlepool andMiddlesbrough; services are operated byNorthern Trains.[34]
Bus services are provided predominantly byStagecoach North East andGo North East; routes link the town to South Shields, Jarrow, Gateshead and Newcastle.[35]
A mid-Tyne ferry service, which was owned by several shipyards, once operated between Hebburn,Walker andWallsend; it last ran in 1986.[36] One of the fleet, run by the Mid Tyne Ferry Co, was called theTyne Queen; in 2020, she was named theJacobite Queen and was still working onLoch Ness,Inverness, Scotland.[37]
James, Mervyn (1974)Family, Lineage, and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
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