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Yarm

Yarm-on-Tees, or simply Yarm, is a market town in North Yorkshire, England. It lies on a meander of the River Tees, extending south-east to the River Leven and south to the village of Kirklevington. A civil parish in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, Yarm is near the towns of Stockton-on-Tees, 5 miles (8.0 km) to its northeast, and Darlington, 11 miles (18 km) to its west.

Yarm is known for its high street, voted Britain's best in a 2007 BBC Breakfast poll, and the Yarm Viaduct which spans across the town. It is also known locally for its annual funfair.

The name Yarm is thought to be derived from the Old English gearum, dative plural of gear, 'pool for catching fish' (source of the modern dialect word yair with the same meaning), hence 'at the place of the fish pools'. Yarm was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and was originally a chapelry in the Kirklevington parish in the North Riding of Yorkshire; it later became a parish in its own right.

The Yarm helmet is a c. 10th-century Viking Age helmet that was found in Yarm. It is the first relatively complete Anglo-Scandinavian helmet found in Britain and only the second Viking helmet discovered in north-west Europe. It is displayed nearby in Preston Park Museum, Preston-on-Tees.

Dominican Friars settled in Yarm about 1286, and maintained a friary and a hospital in the town, until 1583. Their memory is preserved in the names of Friarage and Spital Bank. The Friarage was built on top of the cellars of a Dominican friary in 1770, for the Meynell family. It is now at the centre of Yarm School.

Bishop Skirlaw of Durham built a stone bridge, which still stands, across the Tees in 1400. An iron replacement was built in 1805, but it fell down in 1806. For many years, Yarm was at the tidal limit and head of navigation on the River Tees.

On 1 February 1643, during the First English Civil War, a small Roundhead force attempted to halt the progress of a large waggon-train of arms, landed at Tynemouth and destined to bolster the Royalist war effort in Yorkshire and beyond. Heavily outnumbered and outflanked by Royalist ford crossings, the Parliamentarians were quickly routed and the Royalists gained the bridge, crossing into Yorkshire.

On 12 February 1821, at the George & Dragon Inn, the meeting was held that pressed for the third and successful attempt for a Bill to give permission to build the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world's first public railway.

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