Was the North East of England invented by the television age?

It may surprise those of us who know and love North East England - but university researchers are challenging current perceptions about the place. They’re even suggesting the region’s identity, as we understand it today, may only be 50 years old and was quite possibly invented by a television company.

That's one of the more startling conclusions from a major £860,000 five-year research project involving the five north eastern universities funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Dr Diana Newton, from the University of Teesside's highly rated Historical Research group, was one of those closely involved with the project. She explained the researchers looked back as far as Anglo-Saxon times to see whether or not the two north-eastern counties - Durham and Northumberland - formed a recognisable region in times past.

Now Director of the North East England History Institute (NEEHI), the body across the North East universities which co-ordinates research into the history of the North East, she says: "In one sense, the North East had no real meaning until the arrival of the age of television, with its 1920s transmitter technology determining the scope and definition of English regions.

"We concluded that the 'North East' did not begin to appear until the late 19th century when various employers' associations in shipbuilding, engineering and iron-making named themselves north-east coast federations.

"But even in the early 20th century, the differences and distinctions between Northumberland and Durham were quite marked. We found that a North Eastern regional identity did not fully emerge from the many overlapping identities that characterised its constituent counties until after the middle of the 20th-century."

Dr Newton cited the arrival of an independent television company as a major turning point, with the first edition of Tyne/Tees Television's The Viewer in 1959 assuring viewers that it would serve 'the region stretching from beyond the Tees in the south to well beyond the Tyne in the north…a region with a culture, a tradition and a way of life entirely its own'.

The research findings are being drawn together in a volume of essays entitled 'Regional Identities in North East England, c. 1300 - 2000', edited by Adrian Green and AJ Pollard to be published next year by Boydell and Brewer.

Professor Anthony Pollard, a University Fellow at Teesside and one of the co-authors of the report, said: "Our findings may surprise some people not least because the North East is considered to be amongst the most distinctive of the present day English regions. But the question of what is meant by a region is not as straightforward as it might seem."

For more information see the Regional Identity and the North East article published in the University of Teesside's Research and Enterprise magazine.

Contacts: For more information, please contact Dr Diana Newton on 01642 384061 or email d.newton@tees.ac.uk

If you would like to contact Professor Pollard this can be done either through Dr Newton or via Nic Mitchell, Press and Public Relations Manager at the University of Teesside, on 01642 342018 or by emailing pr@tees.ac.uk

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