Posts Tagged ‘Middlesbrough’

Shipping Containers for sale in Middlesbrough North Yorkshire

Estimated Population: 142,691

Although often thought of as a settlement with no early history, the name Middlesbrough can trace its roots back a long way. Mydilsburgh is the earliest recorded form of the name and the element ‘burgh’ denotes an ancient fort or settlement of pre-Saxon origin. The burgh may have included a monastic cell and was probably situated on the elevated land where the Victorian church of St Hildas (demolished in 1969) was later built, while the ‘Mydil’ or middle could be either a person’s name or a reference to Middlesbrough’s location, half way between the great Christian centres of Durham and Whitby.

After the Saxons the area became home to Viking settlers and it is argued by some that old Cleveland has the highest density of Scandinavian parish names in Britain. Names of Viking origin are abundant in the area - for example, Thornaby, Ormesby, Stainsby, Lackenby, Maltby, Normanby, Tollesby and Lazenby which were once separate villages that belonged to Vikings called Thormad, Orm, Steinn, Hlakkande, Malti and Toll, but now form suburbs of Middlesbrough. Lazenby was the village belonging to a Leysingr - a freeman; Normanby, a Norseman’s village and Danby (in neighbouring North Yorkshire), a Dane’s village. The name Mydilsburgh is the earliest recorded form of Middlesbrough’s name and dates to Saxon times (400 to 1000 A.D.), whilst many of the aforementioned mentioned villages appear in the Domesday Book of 1086.

In 1801 Middlesbrough consisted of just four farmhouses, but during the latter half of the nineteenth century experienced a growth unparalleled in England. It was famously dubbed by Gladstone ‘an infant Hercules’ in ‘England’s enterprise’.

Shipping Containers for sale in Middlesbrough North Yorkshire