York

Carpet Fitters York North Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 193,300

York is a walled city, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England.   The city is noted for its rich heritage and it has played an important role throughout much of its almost 2,000 year existence. The city was founded as Eboracum in AD 71 by the Romans and was made the capital of Britannia Inferior.  During the Roman period influential historical figures, such as Constantine the Great, became associated with the city.   The entire Roman Empire was governed from York for two years by Septimius Severus.

After the Angles moved in, the city was renamed Eoferwic, and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Northumbria.  The Vikings captured the city in 866, renaming it Jórvík, the capital of a wider kingdom of the same name covering much of Northern England. Around the year 1000, the city became known as York.

Richard II wished to make York the capital of England, but before he could effect this he was deposed.  After the Wars of the Roses, York housed the Council of the North and was regarded as the capital of the North.   It was only after The Restoration that the political importance of the city began to decline.  The Province of York is one of the two English ecclesiastical provinces, alongside that of Canterbury.

From 1996, the term City of York describes a unitary authority area which includes rural areas beyond the old city boundaries.   The urban area has a population of 137,505, while the entire unitary authority has 193,300 (2007 est.) people.

Carpet Fitters York North Yorkshire

Stockton on Tees

Carpet Fitters Stockton on Tees South Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 190,200

Stockton-on-Tees is a market town in North East England. It is the major settlement in the unitary authority area and borough of Stockton-on-Tees. For ceremonial purposes, the borough is split between County Durham and North Yorkshire as it also incorporates a number of smaller towns including Billingham, Yarm and Thornaby. The combined size of the borough equates to approx 180,000 people and makes it larger than Middlesbrough in terms of population and square miles.

Stockton began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement on high ground close to the northern bank of the River Tees.

The manor of Stockton was created in around 1138. It was purchased by Bishop Pudsey of Durham in 1189 and since then has undergone many changes.

Stockton’s market can trace its history back to 1310, when Bishop Bek of Durham granted a market charter - to our town of Stockton a market upon every Wednesday for ever.

Stockton Castle is first referred to in 1376. It was captured by the Scottish in 1644 and was occupied by them until 1646, but was destroyed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell at the end of the Civil War. There is now a shopping centre, called the Castlegate Centre, where the original castle stood. There are no known accurate depictions of the castle in existence.

In June 1890 Major Robert Ropner offered a piece of land to the people of Stockton which could be used as a public park, providing the local council would lay it out tastefully and keep it forever. Just over three years later, on 4 October 1893, the park was officially opened by the then Duke & Duchess of York. After a century of regular use by the people of Stockton, the park was refurbished and renovated between 2004-2007 to its former glory by Stockton Council, thanks to a £2.65m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It includes a new bandstand, based on the original design, a Park Ranger’s Office and a cafe, (run by the local charity, the Friends of Ropner Park).

It was the home, 1781 - 1859, of John Walker, who invented the friction match in 1826. Until recently, a roundabout in the centre of Stockton commemorated it as the birthplace of the friction match, but the roundabout has since been demolished to make way for a new road system which circles the Simon Bailes Peugeot garage. Thomas Sheraton, the famous furniture designer, was born in Stockton in 1751; he moved to London in 1790, where he died in 1806.

Carpet Fitters Stockton on Tees South Yorkshire

Middlesbrough

Carpet Fitters Middlesbrough North Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 142,691

Middlesbrough is a town in the Tees Valley conurbation of North East England and sits within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire. It is the largest and most populous settlement within the Borough of Middlesbrough, which encompasses the town and several outlying villages which have become suburbs.

In Middlesbrough in 686 a monastic cell was consecrated by St. Cuthbert at the request of St. Hilda Abbess of Whitby and in 1119 Robert Bruce granted and confirmed the church of St. Hilda of Middleburg to Whitby.   Up until its closure on the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1537, the church was maintained by 12 Benedictine monks, many of whom became vicars or rectors of various places in Cleveland.   The importance of the early church at “Middleburg”, later known as Middlesbrough Priory, is indicated by the fact that in 1452 it possessed four altars.

After the Angles the area became home to Viking settlers and it is argued by some that ‘old’ Cleveland has the highest density of Scandinavian parish names in Britain. Names of Viking origin (with the suffix by) are abundant in the area - for example, Thornaby, Ormesby, Stainsby, Lackenby, Maltby and Tollesby were once separate villages that belonged to Vikings called Thormad, Orm, Steinn, Hlakkande, Malti and Toll, but now form suburbs of Middlesbrough. Lazenby was the village belonging to a Leysingr - a freeman; Normanby, a Norseman’s village and Danby (in neighbouring North Yorkshire), a Dane’s village.   The name Mydilsburgh is the earliest recorded form of Middlesbrough’s name and dates to Anglian times (400 to 1000 AD), while many of the aforementioned villages appear in the Domesday Book of 1086.

Other links persist in the area, often through school and/or road names, to now-outgrown or abandoned local settlements, such as the medieval settlement of Stainsby, deserted by 1757, which amounts to little more today than a series of grassy mounds near the A19 road.  In 1952 Stainsby Secondary Modern School, now renamed Acklam Grange Secondary School, was named for this village.

Carpet Fitters Middlesbrough North Yorkshire