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Billingham
Billingham is a town and civil parish in County Durham, England. The town is on the north side of the River Tees and is governed as part of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority. It had a population of 33,927, in the 2021 census.
The settlement has existed since Anglo-Saxon times as a village. A post-Second World War town centre was built north of the old village centre on the town's grange. It was a township, with an urban district, from 1923, until 1968, when it was absorbed into the County Borough of Teesside, and later part of the county of Cleveland.
Billingham is home to the Billingham Manufacturing Plant which is a major producer of chemicals for agriculture.
The town was settled by Angles and has a name either meaning Billa's people's home or bill-shaped hill people's home. The town was in one of the Northumbrian regiones. This regione is thought to cover much of the land of northern Teesdale and had late Viking rule. It was later broken up with Billingham in the Hartness district, then into a small shire called Billinghamshire.
St Cuthbert's Parish Church has elements dating back to the late-7th/early-8th-century in its nave and a tower dating c. AD 1000. There is also a 7th-century grave-marker from the church in the British Museum.
The town's chemical industry started in the early 1900s. In 1917, the town was chosen to be the site of a new chemical works supplying ammonia for the war. However, the plant was not completed until 1920, after the war had ended. The Brunner Mond Company took over the site and converted it to manufacture fertilisers. In December 1926, Brunner Mond merged with three other chemical companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), who took control of the plant. With the World Wars creating a high demand for explosives it led to a massive expansion of Billingham and post-Second World War a new town centre was built. ICI began to produce plastics at Billingham in 1966.
Aldous Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant at ICI and gave a detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the novel by this Billingham visit. Henry Thorold in the Shell Guide to County Durham states:
This is one of the most extraordinary of experiences, a sight almost unique in England. On either side of the road are the works. Steaming, sizzling—tall steel towers, great cylinders, pipes everywhere... At night the whole industrial world along the banks of the Tees comes to life... brilliant with a thousand lights, the great girders of the Transporter Bridge dark in silhouette: a magic city.
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Billingham
Billingham is a town and civil parish in County Durham, England. The town is on the north side of the River Tees and is governed as part of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority. It had a population of 33,927, in the 2021 census.
The settlement has existed since Anglo-Saxon times as a village. A post-Second World War town centre was built north of the old village centre on the town's grange. It was a township, with an urban district, from 1923, until 1968, when it was absorbed into the County Borough of Teesside, and later part of the county of Cleveland.
Billingham is home to the Billingham Manufacturing Plant which is a major producer of chemicals for agriculture.
The town was settled by Angles and has a name either meaning Billa's people's home or bill-shaped hill people's home. The town was in one of the Northumbrian regiones. This regione is thought to cover much of the land of northern Teesdale and had late Viking rule. It was later broken up with Billingham in the Hartness district, then into a small shire called Billinghamshire.
St Cuthbert's Parish Church has elements dating back to the late-7th/early-8th-century in its nave and a tower dating c. AD 1000. There is also a 7th-century grave-marker from the church in the British Museum.
The town's chemical industry started in the early 1900s. In 1917, the town was chosen to be the site of a new chemical works supplying ammonia for the war. However, the plant was not completed until 1920, after the war had ended. The Brunner Mond Company took over the site and converted it to manufacture fertilisers. In December 1926, Brunner Mond merged with three other chemical companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), who took control of the plant. With the World Wars creating a high demand for explosives it led to a massive expansion of Billingham and post-Second World War a new town centre was built. ICI began to produce plastics at Billingham in 1966.
Aldous Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant at ICI and gave a detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the novel by this Billingham visit. Henry Thorold in the Shell Guide to County Durham states:
This is one of the most extraordinary of experiences, a sight almost unique in England. On either side of the road are the works. Steaming, sizzling—tall steel towers, great cylinders, pipes everywhere... At night the whole industrial world along the banks of the Tees comes to life... brilliant with a thousand lights, the great girders of the Transporter Bridge dark in silhouette: a magic city.
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