Stockton

The bishops of Durham kept a fortified manor house here, Stockton Castle, first recorded in 1376, and by the 15th century the town was building ships. Shipbuilding and rope-making made it the chief port for County Durham, the North Riding and Westmorland, sending out rope, farm produce and lead from the Yorkshire Dales. The castle did not outlast the Civil War: the Scots held it from 1644 to 1646, and Cromwell had it pulled down once the fighting was over.

The town itself kept growing. In 1771 a stone bridge of five arches replaced the Bishop's Ferry and became the lowest crossing of the Tees, and by the end of the century iron-making and engineering were turning the quiet market town into an industrial one. The decisive change came on 27 September 1825, when George Stephenson drove Locomotion No. 1 on the first journey of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, a line that greatly boosted the town's trade.