North East England

Before Rome the region was home to the Brigantes and, further north, the Votadini, and from AD 122 Hadrian's Wall ran across it from the Tyne at Wallsend towards the Solway, garrisoned by Roman troops. After the legions left, Anglian settlers founded the kingdoms that became Northumbria, whose kings held court at Bamburgh. In the 630s King Oswald invited the Irish monk Aidan from Iona to found a monastery on Lindisfarne, and the next century was a golden age: the Lindisfarne Gospels, the cult of St Cuthbert, and Bede writing his history of the English church at Jarrow. The Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793 is usually taken as the start of the Viking age in Britain.

After 1066 the Normans built castles at Newcastle and Durham, and the bishops of Durham ruled a semi-independent county palatine as prince-bishops until the 19th century. Northumberland remained a war zone against Scotland for centuries, with the Battle of Flodden fought in 1513 and the border reiver families raiding across the hills.

Coal made the modern region. It was shipped from the Tyne for centuries, and in 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway became the first public railway to use steam locomotives. George Stephenson came from Wylam, William Armstrong built guns and ships on the Tyne, and the Wear and the Tees filled with shipyards and steelworks. Their decline in the 20th century brought the Jarrow March of 1936, the pit closures of the 1980s and a long search for new work that continues today.

Identity here is strong and local. Newcastle people are Geordies, Sunderland's are Mackems and Teessiders are sometimes called Smoggies, and the Tyne–Wear football derby between Newcastle United and Sunderland is one of England's fiercest. The accents are distinct, and the older Northumbrian speech, with its uvular "r" or burr, survives in the countryside.

The region's music is folk as much as pop: the Northumbrian smallpipes, a bellows-blown bagpipe, have their own repertoire, and the song "Blaydon Races" from 1862 is still sung at matches. Mining left a deep cultural stamp, from brass bands and colliery banners to the Pitmen Painters of Ashington. Its great annual gathering is the Durham Miners' Gala, the "Big Meeting", when banners from former pit villages are marched into the city each July.

Other fixtures are the Great North Run, a half marathon from Newcastle to South Shields held since 1981, and the Hoppings fair on Newcastle's Town Moor in June. Northern friendliness is a genuine regional trait — strangers talk at bus stops and in pubs — and going out in Newcastle is famously done without a coat in any weather.

About 2.6 million people live in the North East. Tyneside is the largest urban area, with Newcastle at around 300,000 and Gateshead, North and South Tyneside around it; Sunderland has about 275,000 people and Middlesbrough about 150,000, at the centre of the Teesside towns. Durham is a small cathedral and university city, and Northumberland is one of England's most thinly populated counties.

The old industries have largely gone, and the economy now leans on public services, universities, retail and call centres, alongside Nissan's large car plant at Sunderland, chemicals on Teesside and offshore engineering on the Tyne. The region has some of England's lowest average incomes and highest unemployment, and "levelling up" and investment in green industries on the former Redcar steelworks site are live political topics.

Daily life has a strong community rhythm: working men's clubs, football on Saturdays, a pint on the Quayside or the Diamond Strip in Newcastle, and seaside days at Tynemouth, Whitley Bay and Seaton Carew. Newcastle and Durham universities keep both cities young in term time.

The North East's everyday food is hearty and working-class. The stottie cake, a flat, heavy round loaf, is split and filled with ham and pease pudding, a spread of boiled split peas; a saveloy dip adds a sausage and gravy. Pan haggerty is sliced potato and onion baked with cheese, panackelty a slow-cooked corned beef and potato hotpot, and singin' hinnies are griddle scones that sizzle as they cook. Teesside has its own takeaway, the parmo — breaded chicken covered in béchamel sauce and melted cheese.

The coast supplies smoked and fresh fish: Craster kippers, herring split and smoked over oak in the village's smokehouse, crab from the Northumberland harbours, and fish and chips at every resort. Northumberland lamb and beef from the hill farms are also prized.

Newcastle Brown Ale, launched in 1927, is the region's best-known beer, although it is no longer brewed on Tyneside; small breweries have taken its place. Lindisfarne mead is made on Holy Island, and Greggs, the bakery chain known for its sausage rolls, started in Newcastle.

Newcastle's Quayside is framed by a series of bridges, including the Tyne Bridge of 1928 and the tilting Gateshead Millennium Bridge; across the river stand the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Glasshouse music venue, and on the hill above Gateshead the Angel of the North. The city's centre, Grey Street and Grainger Town, is a fine run of 19th-century classical streets. Durham's cathedral, with Cuthbert's shrine and Bede's tomb, and its castle stand high on a loop of the River Wear. Beamish, an open-air museum of the region's past, and the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle are the other big draws of County Durham.

Hadrian's Wall is most dramatic in Northumberland, where it follows the Whin Sill crags above Crag Lough. Housesteads fort, Vindolanda, famous for its wooden writing tablets, and Chesters are the key Roman sites, and the Hadrian's Wall Path walks the whole length.

The Northumberland coast is lined with castles: Warkworth, the ruin of Dunstanburgh, Bamburgh above its dunes, and, inland, Alnwick with the Alnwick Garden and its Poison Garden. Boats from Seahouses visit the Farne Islands' puffins and grey seals, and Holy Island's causeway leads to Lindisfarne Priory and Lindisfarne Castle. Inland lie Northumberland National Park, Kielder Water and Forest Park, and High Force waterfall in Upper Teesdale.