Harton is a suburban area of South Shields,

South Tyneside South Tyneside is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England. It is bordered by all four other boroughs in Tyne and Wear – Gateshead to the west, Sunderland in the south, North Tyneside to the no ...

, North East England. It was historically a village, however as the urban area grew it merged with its adjacent villages to become part of the town. Some of the original village buildings are still intact today, such as St Peter's Church.

Politics

Metropolitan Borough Council

The electoral ward of Harton, like all wards in the borough, votes for three councillors on the

metropolitan borough council.

UK Parliament

Harton is one of ten wards who vote for the South Shields seat in the UK Parliament, with an estimated electorate of 4098 people in the 2015 elections.

Education

The area of Harton contains two schools,

Harton Technology College Harton Academy (formerly Harton Technology College, or Harton Comprehensive School) is a mixed secondary school and sixth form located in South Shields, South Tyneside, England. It was founded on the existing site in 1936. In 2006, Ofsted rate ...

serving pupils between 11 and 18 years old, and Harton Primary School, serving pupils between ages five and 11 years.

History

Structures

The village of Harton has been built around St Peter's Church for over 150 years now, and the church is still active to this day. Other buildings of note in the village are The Vigilant Inn and The Old Ship

pub A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

s. Opposite The Vigilant, the old walls of the village are still visible.

Transport

The whole town of South Shields had horse-drawn, then electric trams, before electric trolleybuses were introduced in 1936.

Harton Colliery

There was a colliery near Harton established sometime in the 1800s, as it features on, and has full rail infrastructure on, the Ordnance Survey map of 1896. There is also reference from the Durham Mining Museum to one fatality, where a man was "crushed in the cage" ('the cage' being slang for the carriage that transported men to and from the surface), on the 25 February 1851, although it is not known how well-established the colliery was at this point. Harton Colliery was the location of a successful experiment in 1854 by the

Astronomer Royal Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the Astronomer Royal for Scotland dating from 1834. The post ...

George Biddell Airy Sir George Biddell Airy (; 27 July 18012 January 1892) was an English mathematician and astronomer, and the seventh Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the E ...

, to calculate the mean density of the earth by recording the difference in the movements of a

pendulum A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward th ...

at the top and bottom of a coal mine.Harton Colliery, Durham Mining Museum, www.dmm.org.uk

References

{{Reflist Suburbs of South Shields