Industrial Heritage

"At times when I felt the urge to escape I would wander into the shale drift just to look through that window of the earth and out upon the gleaming sea. To walk under the earth and then emerge above the waters was thrilling."

Harold Heslop describing Boulby Ironstone Mine

The legacy of the Industrial Revolution can be found throughout Northumbria - the birthplace of many innovations through recent centuries. Waggonways carried coal around the region long before the world's first passenger railway was built between Stockton and Darlington. With so many preserved railways and industrial sites the region plays a major part in our national industrial heritage.

At Beamish Open Air Museum, the social and industrial history of the region is vividly re-created, including town street, mine, chapel, school and tramway.

In the North Pennines area, former centuries of lead mining have left unique marks on the landscape - mysterious ruins and grassy folds of land high in the hills - and at Killhope Lead Mining Centre the great wheel still turns.

The Sunderland Glass Trail celebrates the traditional and contemporary skills of makers and artists in glass, and the glass-blowers art can be observed in action at the new National Glass Centre in Sunderland.