Middlesborough

Middlesborough, a great iron-manufacturing and shipping centre in the North Riding of Yorkshire, is a municipal, parliamentary, and county borough, and capital of the district of Cleveland. It is on the south bank of the Tees near its mouth, 15 miles by rail ENE. of Darlington, 50 N. of York, and 246 N. by W. of London. In 1829 the site was occupied by a solitary farmhouse surrounded by marshy land; the town owes its remarkably rapid growth partly to the extension thither (in 1830) of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, but mainly to the discovery of iron ore in the adjoining Cleveland hills (1850). Another industry—that of boring salt—was added in 1886. There are here iron and steel works, blast-furnaces, chemical works, wood and iron shipbuilding-yards, sawmills, marine engineering works, wire, nail, and tube works, salt and soda works, &c. Of the total British produce of iron Cleveland contributed over a fourth; the make of pig-iron in Middlesborough rose from 964,000 tons in 1870 to over 2,000,000 tons in 1893. At the shipbuilding yards 3000 men are employed. The export of coal is extensive. Here are a spacious dock; a graving-dock, finished in 1875 at a cost of £120,000; and the South Gare break-water (1864–88), nearly $2\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$ miles long. There are, besides Anglican churches and Nonconformist chapels, a Catholic cathedral and a Jewish synagogue. The town-hall and municipal buildings were erected at a cost of £120,000, and were opened in 1889 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Among other public buildings are a market-house, corporation baths, banks, workhouse, royal exchange, high school, &c.; and there are theatres, clubs, masonic and temperance halls. The Albert Park of 72 acres was given in 1868 to the borough by Mr H. W. F. Bölcow (1806–78), the first mayor and member of parliament; on the celebration of Middlesborough Jubilee in 1881 a monument to Mr Bölcow's memory was unveiled. There is also a monument in Exchange Place to Mr Vaughan, the founder of the Cleveland iron trade. The first governing body was established in 1841; the borough was incorporated in 1853; and since 1867 Middlesborough returns one member to parliament. The area of the municipal borough is 2813 acres; of the parliamentary borough, 4715 acres. Pop. of the township of Middlesborough (1801) 25; (1821) 40; (1831) 154; (1841) 5463; (1851) 7631; of municipal borough (1861) 18,892; (1871) 39,824; (1881) 55,288; (1891) 75,516. See H. G. Reid's Middlesborough and its Jubilee (1881).