Jarrow

Bede's monastery

In 682, Benedict Biscop founded St Paul's monastery at Jarrow as a sister house to his earlier foundation at Monkwearmouth. It was here that the monk Bede spent almost his entire life, compiling around sixty works of history, theology and science, including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, finished around 731 and still the single most important source for early English history. The site — now home to Jarrow Hall and the parish church of St Paul's — remains one of the best-preserved Anglo-Saxon monastic sites in the country, and sits on the UK's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status alongside Monkwearmouth.

Palmer's and the shipyard town

Jarrow's second identity arrived with Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company, which grew through the 19th century into the town's dominant employer, at one point employing thousands of skilled workers and launching its 1,000th ship around 1930. That dominance made the town dangerously exposed when the yard's fortunes collapsed in the early 1930s.

The Jarrow March

By 1936, with Palmer's closed and local unemployment above 70%, around 200 Jarrow men — who preferred to be called "Crusaders" — set out on 5 October to walk almost 300 miles to Parliament, led by council leader David Riley and Jarrow's MP Ellen Wilkinson. They carried a petition signed by roughly 12,000 residents, asking only for new industry to be brought to the town. The petition was received by the Commons on 31 October but never debated, and the marchers went home believing they had failed. History remembers the Jarrow March rather differently — as one of the defining images of the whole Depression era.