Northern England

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 810.

The Midlands of England

Birmingham is Britain's second largest city. During the Industrial Revolution, Birmingham and the area to its north and west (sometimes known as the Black Country) developed into the country's major engineering centre. Despite the decline of heavy industry in the twentieth century, factories in the Birmingham area still convert iron and steel into a vast variety of goods.

There are other industrial areas in the Midlands, notably the towns between the Black Country and Manchester known as The Potteries (famous for producing china such as that made at the factories of Wedgwood, Spode and Minton) and several towns further east such as Derby, Leicester, and Nottingham. On the east coast, Grimsby, once one of the world's greatest fishing ports, has become the country's major fish processing centre.

Although the Midlands do not have many positive associations in the minds of British people, tourism has flourished in 'Shakespeare country' (centred on Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace), and Nottingham has successfully capitalized on the legend of Robin Hood.

The Pennine mountains run up the middle of northern England like a spine. On either side, the large deposits of coal (used to provide power) and iron ore (used to make machinery) enabled these areas to lead the Industrial Revolution. On the western side, the Manchester area (connected to the port of Liverpool by canal) became, in the nineteenth century, the world's leading producer of cotton goods; on the eastern side, towns such as Bradford and Leeds became the world's leading producers of woollen goods. Many other towns sprang up on both sides of the Pennines at this time, concentrating on certain auxiliary industries or on coal mining. Further south, Sheffield became a centre for the production of steel goods. Further north, around Newcastle, shipbuilding was the major industry.

In the minds of British people, the prototype of the noisy, dirty factories that symbolize the Industrial Revolution is found in the once-industrial north of England. But the achievements of these new industrial towns also induced a feeling of civic pride in their inhabitants and an energetic realism, epitomized by the cliched saying 'where there's muck there's brass (wherever there is dirt, there is money to be made). The decline in heavy industry in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century hit the industrial north of England hard. For a long time, the region as a whole had a level of unemployment significantly above the national average.

The towns on either side of the Pennines are flanked by steep slopes on which it is difficult to build and are surrounded by land, most of which is unsuitable for any agriculture other than sheep farming. Therefore, the pattern of settlement in the north of England is often different from that in the south. Open and uninhabited countryside is never far away from its cities and towns. The typically industrial landscape and the very rural landscape interlock. The wild, windswept moors which are the setting for Emily Bronte's famous nineteenth century novel Wuthering Heights seem a world away from the smoke and grime of urban life - in fact, they are just up the road (about 15 kilometres) from Bradford!

Further away from the main industrial areas, the north of England is sparsely populated. In the north-western corner of the country is the Lake District. The Romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey (the 'Lake Poets') lived here and wrote about its beauty. It is the favourite destination of people who enjoy walking holidays and the whole area is classified as a National Park (the largest in England).