The Industrial Revolution brought momentous change throughout the country and shaped a significant industrial force in the Tees Valley. How this transformation was achieved is revealed as the towns and villages along the Tees are visited and the entrepreneurs, inventors and innovators who drove the industrialisation are discussed. This book takes the reader from Middleton in Teesdale, where the London Lead Co. set up its headquarters, to Barnard Castle and its ‘dark satanic mills’, Darlington’s Quaker dynasties, the expanding port of Stockton-on-Tees and the new town of South Stockton with its shipbuilders, potteries and engineers. Then to Prime Minister Gladstone’s ‘infant Hercules’, Middlesbrough, where the discovery of ironstone in the local hills brought the Cleveland ‘gold rush’. Soon the banks of the river were lined with blast furnaces producing the nation’s iron.

The Industrial Revolution in the Tees Valley is packed with illustrations from the time together with modern photographs highlighting how the area’s heritage can still be explored.