George Stephenson (1781-1848) is acknowledged as the father of the railways.
The son of a poor colliery worker he was born at Wylam, eight miles from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on 9th June 1781. He was responsible for opening up the railways in a way no one else was.
Not just in Britain but across the world, it was the railways, which allowed the development of the whole
of North America.
The Stockton & Darlington line was opened on 27th September 1825 the first public railway line in the world.
The world’s first locomotive factory was in Forth Street in Newcastle. Its odd that Stephenson has very few public monuments in the region he came from to acknowledge the impact he had on the world.
George Stephenson and North East industrial heritage
The Geordies name, given to people from Tyneside was as a result of George Stephenson as well.
People from the north east whose first name is George often got called Geordie.
George Stephenson invented the worlds first miners safety lamp and when miners in other parts of Britain adopted the Davy lamp the miners of Co Durham and Northumberland stayed loyal to Stephenson’ design the miners in other parts of the country started calling the North East miners Geordies.
An alternative explanation relating to Stephenson is that when in 1826 George Stephenson gave evidence to a Parliamentary Commission on the railways his North East dialect drew contemptuous sneers and the London–based commission even thought Stephenson was from Ireland, Scotland or even Scandinavia such was the southerners ignorance of the Tyneside accent.
From that date, it is said that Londoners began to call the Keelmen who carried coal from the Tyne to the Thames "Geordie".
George Stephenson - remembering one of our own.
by reiverman
@ 07/06/2007 - 19:08:11
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nice one.. liked this piece.
My gran used to live near his house as well..lol small world.
Would it be possible for you to write a piece on Jesmond dene, it's an interesting area of Newcastle seeing as it was Built by Lord Armstrong and then handed over to the people of Newcastle. I love that place (when I goto Newcastle).
thanks again.
G
 | reiverman [Member] 2007-06-10 @ 17:12 |
Jesmond Dene has got a lot to offer GrayBags101, here is s link to a site which gives the history of the Dene and probably does it a lot more justice than I could.
http://www.jesmonddene.org.uk/HistoryTrail.htm
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