North Tyneside · Town
New York
A North Tyneside village named after Manhattan, with a vanished neighbour once called Philadelphia.
New York, Tyne and Wear has a population in the low hundreds — making it, almost certainly, the smallest place in Britain sharing a name with America's largest city.
Named after a revolution
A settlement has stood at this crossroads — on the old route linking Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey to Lindisfarne's docks — since Anglo-Saxon times, but it had no fixed name until Britain's capture of Long Island during the American War of Independence in 1776, when it was formally christened New York in celebration. A neighbouring, now-vanished hamlet took the name Philadelphia for the same reason. New York later grew around Algernon Colliery, which closed in 1966, kept a working blacksmith's forge from the 1760s until 2016, and today is home to the North Tyneside Steam Railway and the Stephenson Railway Museum — along with a Grade II-listed 1921 war memorial shaped as a Celtic cross.
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Quick facts
- Borough
- North Tyneside
- Historic county
- Northumberland
- Known for
- Its name, and the Stephenson Railway Museum