(pronounced HART-le-pool) is a town and
North Sea port in
North East England . It is within the borough of
Hartlepool and the
Ceremonial and
Traditional County of
County Durham .
Hartlepool was founded as a village in the
7th Century AD, springing up around a
Convent founded in
640 on a headland overlooking a natural harbour. The convent became famous under
St Hilda , who served as its
Abbess from
649 -
657 , but it was destroyed by the
Vikings in
800 .
During the
Middle Ages the village grew into an important (though still small) town, gaining a market and walls, and its harbour was improved to serve as the official port of the
County Palatine of
Durham . Its harbour made it a convenient outlet for the
Coalfield s of South Durham and in
1835 a
Railway was built to enable South Durham coal to be exported. A rival railway was built in
1847 and docks were established at its terminus, around which a new town,
West Hartlepool , was founded.
The two communities grew very rapidly, from only a thousand at the start of the 19th century to a population of 64,000 in
1891 . The modern town represents a joining together of "Old Hartlepool", locally known as the "headland", and West Hartlepool. What was West Hartlepool became the larger town and the two were formally joined in
1967 . Today the term "West Hartlepool" is rarely heard outwith a sporting context, as a famous but rather unsuccessful
Rugby Union team bears the name.
The area became heavily industrialised with an
Ironworks (established
1838 ) and
Shipyard s in the docks (established in the
1870s ). By
1913 , no fewer than 42 ship-owning companies were located in the town, responsible for 235 ships. This made it a key target for
Germany in the
First World War . The first German offensive against Britain was mounted at Hartlepool between 8.10 and 9.30 am on the morning of
16 December 1914 , when units of the
Imperial German Navy bombarded Hartlepool, West Hartlepool,
Whitby and
Scarborough with a total of 1150 shells, killing 137 people and wounding 592. Two coastal defence batteries at Hartlepool returned fire, firing 143 shells, damaging three German ships including the
Battlecruiser SMS ''Blücher'' . An attempt by the German High Command to repeat the attack a month later led to the
Battle Of Dogger Bank on
24 January 1915 .
Hartlepool suffered badly in the
Great Depression of the
1930s and suffered high unemployment until the start of the
Second World War , during which its shipbuilding and steelmaking industries enjoyed a renaissance. After the war, both industries went into a severe decline. The last ship to be constructed in Hartlepool left the slips in
1961 . There was a boost to the retail sector in
1968 when
Middleton Grange Shopping Centre was opened by
Princess Anne , with over 140 new retail outlets including
Marks & Spencer and
Woolworths on the site of the old terraced streets that where bombed during the Second World War. By the
1980s the area was again severely affected by unemployment. A series of major investment projects in the
1990s revived the town centre with a new
Marina , rehabilitation of derelict land, the indoor conversion to modernise
Middleton Grange Shopping Centre from the 1960s
Brutalist architecture and the construction of much new housing, which has led to the town becoming improbably chic in recent years. The town's Historic Quay is home to Britain's oldest warship still afloat, the frigate
HMS Trincomalee , built in
Bombay 1817 .
Hartlepool Power Station is a
Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) type nuclear power plant opened near Hartlepool in the 1980s.
The town is served by
Hartlepool Railway Station .
The
Hartlepool Constituency was represented in the
House Of Commons from 1992 until summer
2004 by
Labour MP,
Peter Mandelson .
Mr Mandelson resigned to take up a role in the
European Commission . The
By-election On September 30 was won by
Labour 's
Iain Wright with a much-reduced majority following an 18% swing to the
Liberal Democrats . He retained the seat with a greatly increased majority in the
2005 UK General Election .
Hartlepool is famous for allegedly executing a monkey during the
Napoleonic Wars . A French ship was wrecked off the town, when the townspeople went to investigate the crew had gone but they found a pet monkey. They assumed that the monkey was a Frenchman, and hanged it as a suspected spy. This story is unconfirmed, and has been told about a number of coastal town in Britain, e.g.
Greenock and
Mevagissey .
Historians have also pointed to the prior existence of a Scottish
Folk Song called "And the Boddamers hung the Monkey-O". It describes how a monkey survived a shipwreck off the village of
Boddam near
Peterhead in
Aberdeenshire . Because the villagers could only claim salvage rights if there were no survivors from the wreck, they allegedly hanged the monkey. A famous
19th Century Geordie comic singer and songwriter named
Ned Corvan is said to have been the first to mention the Hartlepool monkey story in his "Monkey Song"; it has been suggested that he adapted the Scottish folk song to give it a north-eastern English flavour.
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"
Monkey Hanger " is a common term of (semi-friendly) abuse aimed at "Poolies", often from bitter footballing rivals
Darlington . The mascot of
Hartlepool United F.C. is ''H'Angus the monkey''. The man in the monkey costume,
Stuart Drummond , stood for the post of Mayor in
2002 and campaigned on a platform which included free bananas for schoolchildren. To widespread surprise, he won, becoming the first
Directly-elected Mayor of Hartlepool, winning 7,400 votes with a 52% share of the vote and a turnout of 30%. He was re-elected by a landslide in
2005 , winning 16,912 on a turnout of 51% – 10,000 votes more than his nearest rival, the Labour Party candidate.
The monkey legend is also linked with another of the town's sports clubs, Hartlepool Rovers RFC, which uses the hanging monkey as the club logo. On tours it would hang a monkey on the posts of the rugby pitch to spread the story.
In June
2005 a large bone was found washed ashore on Hartlepool beach, which initially was taken as giving credence to the monkey legend. Analysis revealed the bone to be that of a
Red Deer which had died 6,000 years ago.
