Definitions
For government and statistical purposes, Northern England is defined as the area covered by the three statistical regions of England – North East England,Historic counties
The historic counties ceased to be used for any administrative purpose in 1899 but remain important to some people, notably for county cricket.Other definitions
Some areas ofGeography
Through the North of England run the Pennines, an upland chain sometimes referred to as "the backbone of England", which stretches from the Tyne Gap to theUrban
Uniquely for such a large urban belt in Europe, these cities are all as recent as the Industrial Revolution; most of them previously scattered villages. Vast urban areas have emerged along the coasts and rivers, and they run almost contiguously into each other in places. Near the east coast, trade fuelled the growth of major ports and settlements (Natural resources
Climate
Northern England has a cool, wet oceanic climate with small areas of oceanic climate#Subpolar variety (Cfc, Cwc), subpolar oceanic climate in the uplands. Averaged across the entire region, Northern England is cooler, wetter and cloudier than England as a whole, and contains both England's coldest point (Cross Fell) and its rainiest point (Seathwaite Fell). Its temperature range and sunshine duration is similar to the UK average and it sees substantially less rainfall than Scotland or Wales. These averages disguise considerable variation across the region, due chiefly to the upland regions and adjacent seas. The prevailing winds across the British Isles are westerlies bringing moisture from the Atlantic Ocean; this means that the west coast frequently receives strong winds and heavy rainfall while the east coast lies in a rain shadow behind the Pennines. As a result, Teesside and the Northumbrian coast are the driest regions in the North, with around of rain per year, while parts of the Lake District receive over . Lowland regions in the more southern parts of Northern England such as Cheshire and South Yorkshire are the warmest, with average maximum July temperatures of over , while the highest points in the Pennines and Lake District reach only . The area has a reputation for cloud and fog – especially along its east coast, which experiences a distinctive Marine layer, sea fog known as Haar (fog), fret – although the Clean Air Act 1956 and decline of heavy industry have seen sunshine duration increase in urban areas in recent years.Language and dialect
English
Dialect
The English spoken today in the North has been shaped by the area's history, and some dialects retain features inherited from Old Norse and the Insular Celtic languages, local Celtic languages. Dialects spoken in the North include Cumbrian dialect, Cumbrian (Cumbria), Geordie (Tyneside), Mackem (Wearside), Lancashire dialect, Lancashire (Lancashire), Manchester dialect, Mancunian (Manchester), English of Northumbria, Northumbrian (Northumberland and Durham), Pitmatic (Great Northern Coalfield), Scouse (Liverpool) and Yorkshire dialect, Tyke (Yorkshire). Linguists have attempted to define a Northern dialect area, corresponding to the area north of a line that begins at the Humber estuary and runs up the River Wharfe and across to the River Lune in north Lancashire. This area corresponds roughly to the ''sprachraum'' of the Old English Northumbrian dialect, although the linguistic elements that defined this area in the past, such as the use of ''doon'' instead of ''down'' and substitution of an ''ang'' sound in words that end -''ong'' (''lang'' instead of ''long''), are now prevalent only in the more northern parts of the region. As speech has changed, there is little consensus on what defines a "Northern" accent or dialect. Northern English accents have not undergone the trap-bath split, TRAP–BATH split, and a common shibboleth to distinguish them from Southern ones is the Northern use of the short a (the near-open front unrounded vowel) in words such as ''bath'' and ''castle''. On the opposite border, most Northern English accents can be distinguished from Scottish English, Scottish accents because they are non-rhotic, although some Lancashire and Northumberland accents remain rhotic. Other features common to many Northern English accents are the absence of the foot-strut split, FOOT–STRUT split (so ''put'' and ''putt'' are homophones), the reduction of the definite article ''the'' to a glottal stop (usually represented in writing as ''t'' or occasionally ''th'', although it is often not pronounced as a /t/ sound) or its total elision, and the T-to-R rule that leads to the pronunciation of ''t'' as a rhotic consonant in phrases like ''get up'' (). The pronouns Thou, ''thou'' and ''thee'' survive in some Northern English dialects, although these are dying out outside very rural areas, and many dialects have an informal second-person plural pronoun: either ''Ye (pronoun), ye'' (common in the North East) or ''wikt:yous, yous'' (common in areas with historical Irish communities). Many dialects use ''wikt:me, me'' as a English possessive, possessive ("me car") and some treat ''wikt:us, us'' likewise ("us cars") or use the alternative ''wikt:wor, wor'' ("wor cars"). Possessive pronouns are also used to mark the names of relatives in speech (for example, a relative called Joan would be referred to as "our Joan" in conversation). With urbanisation, distinctive urban accents have arisen which often differ greatly from the historical accents of the surrounding rural areas and sometimes share features with Southern English accents. Northern English dialects remain an important part of the culture of the region, and the desire of speakers to assert their local identity has led to accents such as Scouse and Geordie becoming more distinctive and spreading into surrounding areas.Literature
The contrasting geography of Northern England is reflected in its literature. On the one hand, the wild moors and lakes have inspired generations of Romantic literature in English, Romantic authors: the poetry of William Wordsworth and the novels of the Brontë family, Brontë sisters are perhaps the most famous examples of writing inspired by these elemental forces. Classics of children's literature such as ''The Railway Children'' (1906), ''The Secret Garden'' (1911) and ''Swallows and Amazons'' (1930) portray these largely untouched landscapes as worlds of adventure and transformation where their protagonists can break free of the restrictions of society. Modern poets such as the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poets Laureate Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage have found inspiration in the Northern countryside, producing works that take advantage of the sounds and rhythms of Northern English dialects. Meanwhile, the industrialising and urbanising cities of the North gave rise to many masterpieces of social realism. Elizabeth Gaskell was the first in a lineage of female realist writers from the North that later included Winifred Holtby, Catherine Cookson, Beryl Bainbridge and Jeanette Winterson. Many of the angry young men of post-war literature were Northern, and working-class life in the face of deindustrialisation is depicted in novels such as ''Room at the Top (novel), Room at the Top'' (1959), ''Billy Liar'' (1959), ''This Sporting Life (novel), This Sporting Life'' (1960) and ''A Kestrel for a Knave'' (1968).Other languages
There are no recognised minority languages in Northern England, although the Northumbrian Language Society campaigns to have the English of Northumbria, Northumbrian dialect recognised as a separate language. It is possible that traces of now-extinct Brythonic languages, Brythonic Celtic languages from the region survive in some rural areas in the Yan Tan Tethera counting systems traditionally used by shepherds. Language contact, Contact between English and immigrant languages has given rise to new accents and dialects. For instance, the variety of English spoken by Poles in Manchester is distinct both from typical Polish-accented English and from Mancunian. At a local level, the diversity of immigrant communities means that some languages that are extremely rare in the country as a whole have strongholds in Northern towns: Bradford for instance has the largest proportion of Pashto speakers, while Manchester has most Cantonese language, Cantonese speakers.History
The prehistoric North
During the ice ages, Northern England was buried under ice sheets, and little evidence remains of habitation – either because the climate made the area uninhabitable, or because glaciation destroyed most evidence of human activity. The northernmost cave art in Europe is found at Creswell Crags in northern Derbyshire, near modern-day Sheffield, which shows signs of Neanderthal inhabitation 50 to 60 thousand years ago, and of a more modern occupation known as the Creswellian culture around 12,000 years ago. Kirkwell Cave in Lower Allithwaite, Cumbria shows signs of the Federmesser culture of the Paleolithic, and was inhabited some time between 13,400 and 12,800 years ago. Significant settlement appears to have begun in the Mesolithic era, with Star Carr in North Yorkshire generally considered the most significant monument of this era. The Star Carr site includes Britain's oldest known house, from around 9000 BC, and the earliest evidence of carpentry in the form of a carved tree trunk from 11000 BC. The Lincolnshire Wolds, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire Wolds around the Humber Estuary were settled and farmed in the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, and the Ferriby Boats – one of the best-preserved finds of the era – were discovered near Hull in 1937. In the more mountainous regions of the Peak District, hillforts were the main Bronze Age settlement and the locals were most likely Pastoralism, pastoralists raising livestock.Iron Age and the Romans
Roman histories name the Celtic tribe that occupied the majority of Northern England as the Brigantes, likely meaning "Highlanders". Whether the Brigantes were a unified group or a looser federation of tribes around the Pennines is debated, but the name appears to have been adopted by the inhabitants of the region, which was known by the Romans as Brigantia (ancient region), Brigantia. Other tribes mentioned in ancient histories, which may have been part of the Brigantes or separate nations, are the Carvetii of modern-day Cumbria and the Parisi (Yorkshire), Parisi of east Yorkshire. The Brigantes allied with the Roman Empire during the Roman conquest of Britain: Tacitus records that they handed the resistance leader Caratacus over to the Empire in 51. Power struggles within the Brigantes made the Romans wary, and they were conquered in a war beginning in the 70s under the governorship of Quintus Petillius Cerialis. The Romans created the province of "Britannia Inferior" (Lower Britain) in the North, and it was ruled from the city of Eboracum (modern York). Eboracum and Deva Victrix (modern Chester) were the main Roman legion, legionary bases in the region, with other smaller forts including Mamucium (Manchester) and Cataractonium (Catterick, North Yorkshire, Catterick). Britannia Inferior extended as far north as Hadrian's Wall, which was the northernmost borders of the Roman Empire, border of the Roman Empire. Although the Romans invaded modern-day Northumberland and part of Scotland beyond it, they never succeeded in conquering the reaches of Britain beyond the River Tyne.Anglo-Saxons and Vikings
After the end of Roman rule in Britain and the arrival of the Angles, Yr Hen Ogledd (the "Old North") was divided into rival kingdoms, Bernicia, Deira, Rheged and Elmet. Bernicia covered lands north of the Tees, Deira corresponded roughly to the eastern half of modern-day Yorkshire, Rheged to Cumbria, and Elmet to the western-half of Yorkshire. Bernicia and Deira were first united asNorman Conquest and the Middle Ages
The 1066 defeat of the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada by the Anglo-Saxon Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York marked the beginning of the end of Viking rule in England, and the almost immediate defeat of Godwinson at the hands of the Norman William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings was in turn the overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon order. The Northumbrian and Danish aristocracy resisted the Norman Conquest, and to put an end to the rebellion, William ordered the Harrying of the North. In the winter of 1069–1070, towns, villages and farms were Scorched earth, systematically destroyed across much of Yorkshire as well as northern Lancashire and County Durham. The region was gripped by famine and much of Northern England was deserted. Chroniclers at the time reported a hundred thousand deaths – modern estimates place the total somewhere in the tens of thousands, out of a population of two million. When the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, much of Northern England was still recorded as wasteland, although this may have been in part because the chroniclers, more interested in manorialism, manorial farmland, paid little attention to pastoral areas. Following Norman subjugation, monasteries returned to the North as missionaries sought to "settle the desert". Monastic orders such as the Cistercians became significant players in the economy of Northern England – the Cistercian Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire became the largest and richest of the Northern abbeys, and would remain so until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Other Cistercian abbeys are at Rievaulx Abbey, Rievaulx, Kirkstall Abbey, Kirkstall and Byland Abbey, Byland. The 7th-century Whitby Abbey was Benedictine and Bolton Abbey, Augustinians, Augustinian. A significant Flemish people, Flemish immigration followed the conquest, which likely populated much of the desolated regions of Cumbria, and which was persistent enough that the town of Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire still had an ethnic enclave called Flemingate in the thirteenth century. During the Anarchy, Scotland invaded Northern England and took much of the land north of the River Tees, Tees. In Treaty of Durham (1139), the 1139 peace treaty that followed, Prince Henry of Scotland was made Earl of Northumberland and kept the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumbria, as well as part of Lancashire. These reverted to English control in 1157, establishing for the most part the modern England–Scotland border. The region also saw violence during The Great Raid of 1322 when Robert the Bruce invaded and raided the whole of Northern England. There was also the Wars of the Roses, including the decisive Battle of Wakefield, although the modern-day conception of the war as a conflict between Lancashire and Yorkshire is anachronistic – House of Lancaster, Lancastrians recruited from across Northern England, including Yorkshire, even requiring mercenaries from Scotland and France, while the House of York, Yorkists drew most of their power from Southern England, Wales and Ireland. The Anglo-Scottish Wars also touched the region, and in just 400 years, Berwick-upon-Tweed – now the northernmost town in England – changed hands more than a dozen times. The wars also saw thousands of Scots settle south of the border, chiefly in the border counties and Yorkshire.Early modern era
After the English Reformation, the North saw several Catholic uprisings, including the Pilgrimage of Grace#Background: Lincolnshire Rising, Lincolnshire Rising, Bigod's Rebellion in Cumberland and Westmorland, and largest of all, the Yorkshire-based Pilgrimage of Grace, all against Henry VIII. His daughter Elizabeth I of England, Elizabeth I faced another Catholic rebellion, the Rising of the North. The region would become the centre of recusancy as prominent Catholic families in Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire refused to convert to Protestantism. Royal power over the region was exercised through the Council of the North at King's Manor, York, which was founded in 1484 by Richard III. The Council existed intermittently for the next two centuries – its final incarnation was created in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace and was chiefly an institution for providing order and dispensing justice. Northern England was a focal point for fighting during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The border counties were invaded by Scotland in the Bishops' Wars, Second Bishops' War, and at the 1640 Treaty of Ripon Charles I of England, King Charles I was forced to temporarily cede Northumberland and County Durham to the Scots and pay to keep the Scottish armies there. To raise enough funds and ratify the final peace treaty, Charles had to call what became the Long Parliament, beginning the process that led to the First English Civil War. In 1641, the Long Parliament abolished the Council of the North for perceived abuses during the Personal Rule period. By the time war broke out in 1642, King Charles had moved his court to York, and Northern England was to become a major base of the Cavalier, Royalist forces until they were routed at the Battle of Marston Moor.Industrial Revolution
At the beginning of theDeindustrialisation and modern history
The First World War was the turning point for the economy of Northern England. In the interwar Britain, interwar years, the Northern economy began to be eclipsed by the South – in 1913–1914, unemployment in "outer Britain" (the North, plus Scotland and Wales) was 2.6% while the rate in Southern England was more than double that at 5.5%, but in 1937 during the Great Depression in the United Kingdom, Great Depression the outer British unemployment rate was 16.1% and the Southern rate was less than half that at 7.1%. The weakening economy and Interwar unemployment and poverty in the United Kingdom, interwar unemployment caused several episodes of social unrest in the region, including the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, 1926 general strike and the Jarrow March. The Great Depression highlighted the weakness of Northern England's specialised economy: as world trade declined, demand for ships, steel, coal and textiles all fell. For the most part, Northern factories were still using nineteenth-century technology, and were not able to keep up with advances in industries such as motors, chemicals and electricals, while the expansion of the National Grid (Great Britain), electric grid removed the North's advantages in terms of power generation and meant it was now more economic to build new factories in the Midlands or South. The industrial concentration in Northern England made it a major target for Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War. The Blitz of 1940–1941 saw major raids on Barrow Blitz, Barrow-in-Furness, Hull Blitz, Hull, Leeds Blitz, Leeds, Manchester Blitz, Manchester, Liverpool Blitz, Merseyside, Newcastle Blitz, Newcastle and Sheffield Blitz, Sheffield with thousands killed and significant damage to the cities. Liverpool, a vital port for supplies from North America, was especially hard hit – the city was the most bombed in the UK outside London and Hull, with around 4,000 deaths across Merseyside and most of the city centre destroyed. Hull, the worst bombed city outside of London suffered damage to 98% of all buildings, the highest percentage of any town or city. The rebuilding that followed, and the simultaneous Slum clearance in the United Kingdom, slum clearance that saw whole neighbourhoods demolished and rebuilt, transformed the faces of Northern cities. Immigration from the "New Commonwealth", especially Pakistan and Bangladesh, starting in the 1950s reshaped Northern England once more, and there are now significant populations from the Indian subcontinent in towns and cities such as Bradford, Leeds, Preston, Lancashire, Preston and Sheffield. Deindustrialisation continued and unemployment gradually increased during the 1970s, but accelerated during the government of Margaret Thatcher, who chose not to encourage growth in the North if it risked growth in the South. The era saw the UK miners' strike (1984–85), 1984–85 miners' strike, which brought hardship for many Northern mining towns. Northern metropolitan county councils, which were Labour strongholds often with very left-wing leadership (such as Militant in Liverpool, Militant-dominated Liverpool and the so-called "People's Republic of South Yorkshire"), had high-profile conflicts with the national government. The increasing awareness of the North–South divide strengthened the distinct Northern English identity, which, despite regeneration in some of the major cities, remains to this day. The region saw several Provisional Irish Republican Army, IRA attacks during the Troubles, including the M62 coach bombing, the Warrington bomb attacks and the 1992 Manchester bombing, 1992 and 1996 Manchester bombings. The latter was the largest bomb detonation in Great Britain since the end of the Second World War, and damaged or destroyed much of central Manchester. The attack led to Manchester's ageing infrastructure being rebuilt and modernised, sparking the regeneration of the city and making it a leading example of post-industrial redevelopment followed by other cities in the region and beyond.Demographics
At the 2011 census, Northern England had a population of 14,933,000 – a growth of 5.1% since 2001 – in 6,364,000 households, meaning that Northerners comprise 28% of the English population and 24% of the UK population. Taken overall, 8% of the population of Northern England were born overseas (3% from the European Union including Ireland and 5% from elsewhere), substantially less than the England and Wales average of 13%, and 5% define their nationality as something other than a UK or Irish identity. 90.5% of the population described themselves as white, compared to an England and Wales average of 85.9%; other ethnicities represented include Pakistani (2.9%), Indian (1.3%), Black (1.3%), Chinese (0.6%) and Bangladeshi (0.5%). The broad averages hide significant variation within the region: Allerdale and Redcar and Cleveland had a greater percentage of the population identifying as White British (97.6% each) than any other district in England and Wales, while Manchester (66.5%), Bradford (67.4%) and Blackburn with Darwen (69.1%) had among the lowest proportions of White British outside London.Languages
95% of the Northern population speak English as a first language – compared to an England and Wales average of 92% – and another 4% speak English as a second language well or very well. The 5% of the population who have another native language are chiefly speakers of European or South Asian languages. At the 2011 census, the largest languages apart from English were Polish language, Polish (spoken by 0.7% of the population), Urdu language, Urdu (0.6%) and Punjabi language, Punjabi (0.5%), and 0.4% of the population speak a Varieties of Chinese, variety of Chinese: a similar distribution to that in the whole of England. Redcar and Cleveland has the largest proportion of the population speaking English as a first language in England, with 99.3%.Religion
At the 2011 census, the North East and North West had the largest proportion of Christians in England and Wales; 67.5% and 67.3% respectively (the proportion in Yorkshire and the Humber was lower at 59.5%). Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West both had significant populations of Muslims – 6.2% and 5.1% respectively – while Muslims in the North East made up only 1.8% of the population. All other faiths combined comprised less than 2% of the population in all regions. The census question on religion has been criticised by the British Humanist Association as leading question, leading, and other surveys of religion tend to find very different results. The 2015 British Election Survey found 52% of Northerners identified as Christian (22% Anglican, 14% non-denominational Christian, 12% Roman Catholic, 2% Methodist, and 2% other Christian denominations), 40% as non-religious, 5% as Muslim, 1% as Hindu and 1% as Jewish.Health
One major manifestation of the North–South divide is in health and life expectancy statistics. All three Northern England statistical regions have lower than average life expectancies and higher than average rates of cancer, circulatory disease, respiratory disease and obesity. Blackpool has the lowest life expectancy at birth in England – male life expectancy at birth between 2012 and 2014 was 74.7, against an England-wide average of 79.5 – and the majority of English districts in the bottom 50 were in the North East or the North West. However, regional differences do seem to be slowly narrowing: between 1991 and 1993 and 2012–2014, life expectancy in the North East increased by 6.0 years and in the North West by 5.8 years, the fastest increases in any region outside London, and the gap between life expectancy in the North East and South East is now 2.5 years, down from 2.9 in 1993. These health inequalities manifested during the COVID-19 pandemic in high infection rates, death rates and excess mortality in Northern England, and in severe job losses in the following COVID-19 recession, Great Lockdown recession. By June 2020, the infection rate in Northern England was nearly double that in London, and a study by the Northern Health Science Alliance found that of the six worst affected areas in COVID-19 pandemic in England, England during the pandemic in their study, five were located in the North.Education
Before the 19th century, there were no universities in Northern England. The first was the University of Durham, founded in 1832 and sometimes counted with the Ancient university, ancient universities of University of Oxford, Oxford and University of Cambridge, Cambridge, although it post-dates them by many centuries. The next universities built in the North were part of the wave of Red brick university, redbrick universities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, there are seven Northern institutions in the Russell Group of leading research universities: Durham, the redbricks of University of Leeds, Leeds, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, University of Manchester, Manchester, Newcastle University, Newcastle and University of Sheffield, Sheffield and the later plate glass university of University of York, York. These universities, together with plate-glass Lancaster University, Lancaster, form the N8 Research Partnership. There is a significant attainment gap between Northern and Southern schools, and pupils in the three Northern regions are less likely than the national average to achieve five higher-tier GCSEs, although this may be down to economic disadvantages faced by Northern pupils rather than an actual difference in school quality. Northern students are under-represented at Oxbridge, where three times as many places go to Southerners as to Northerners, and other Southern universities while Southerners are under-represented at leading Northern universities such as Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Due to the educational attainment and university admission disparities between north and south, there are calls for the government to invest in education in disadvantaged parts of Northern England to redress this.Economy
Like the UK as a whole, the Northern English economy is now dominated by the service sector – in September 2016, 82.2% of workers in the Northern statistical regions were employed in services, compared to 83.7% for the UK as a whole. Manufacturing now employs 9.5%, compared to the national average of 7.6%. The unemployment rate in Northern England is 5.3% compared to an England-wide and UK-wide average of 4.8%, and the North East has the highest unemployment rate in the UK, at 7.0% in December 2016, more than one percentage point higher than any other region. In 2015, the gross value added (GVA) of the Northern English economy was £316 billion, and if it were an independent nation, it would be the tenth largest economy in Europe. The region does have poor growth and productivity rates compared to Southern England and to other EU countries. Growth, employment and household income have lagged behind the South, and the five most Multiple deprivation index, deprived districts in England are all in Northern England, as are ten of the twelve most declining major towns in the UK. The picture is not clear-cut, as the North has areas which are as wealthy as, if not wealthier than, fashionable Southern areas such as Surrey. Yorkshire's Golden Triangle (Yorkshire), Golden Triangle which extends from north Leeds to Harrogate and across to York is an example, as is Cheshire's Golden Triangle (Cheshire), Golden Triangle, centred on Alderley Edge. There are major disparities even across individual cities: Sheffield Hallam (UK Parliament constituency), Sheffield Hallam is one of the wealthiest constituencies in the country, and is the richest outside London and the South East, while Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (UK Parliament constituency), Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, just on the other side of the city, is one of the most deprived. Housing in Northern England is Affordability of housing in the United Kingdom, more affordable than the UK average: the median house price in most Northern cities was below £200,000 in 2015 with typical increases of below 10% over the previous five years. However, some areas have seen house prices fall considerably, putting inhabitants at risk of negative equity. The decline of coal mining and manufacturing in Northern England has led to comparisons with the Rust Belt in the United States. To stimulate the Northern economy, the government has organised a series of programmes to invest in and develop the region, of which the latest as of 2017 is the Northern Powerhouse. The North has also been a significant recipient of Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund, European Union Structural Funds. Between 2007 and 2013, EU funds created around 70,000 jobs in the region, and the majority of Northern Powerhouse funding comes from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank. The loss of these funds following Brexit, combined with potential reductions in exports to the EU, has been identified as a threat to Northern growth.Public sector
The public sector is a major employer in Northern England. Between 2000 and 2008, the majority of new jobs created in Northern England were for the government and its suppliers and contractors. All three Northern regions have public sector employment above the national average, and North East has the highest level in England with 20.2% of the workforce in the public sector as of 2016 – down from 23.4% a decade earlier. The United Kingdom government austerity programme, austerity programme under the government of David Cameron saw significant cuts to public services, and the reduction in public sector employment resulted in job losses for around 3% of the Northern England workforce with significant impact on the regional economy.Agriculture and fisheries
There are of farmland in Northern England. The rough Pennine terrain means that most of Northern England is unsuited for growing crops; like Scotland, Northern farming was traditionally dominated by oats, which grow better than wheat in poor soil. Today, the mix of cereals and vegetables grown is similar to that of the UK as a whole, but only a minority of land is arable land, arable. Only 32% of Northern farmland is primarily used for growing crops, compared to 49% for England as a whole. Conversely, 57% of the land is given over to rearing livestock, and 33% of England's cattle, 43% of its pigs and 46% of its sheep and lambs are reared in the North. The only part of the region that is predominantly given over to crops is the land around the Humber estuary, where the well-drained fens result in excellent quality land. The lowland Cheshire Plain is mostly given over to dairy farming, while in the Pennines and Cheviots grazing sheep play an important role not just in agriculture but also in land management more generally. Moorland#Heather moorland, Heather moorland in the Pennine uplands is home to driven grouse shooting from 12 August (the Glorious Twelfth) until 10 December every year. The number of grouse moors in Northern England is a major threat to natural predators, which are often killed by gamekeepers to protect grouse, and as a result, the Cumbria Wildlife Trust describes the North's moors as a "black hole" for the endangered hen harrier. Sea fishing is an important industry for Northern coastal towns. Major fishing ports include Fleetwood, Grimsby, Hull and Whitby. At its height, Grimsby was the largest fishing port in the world, but the Northern fishing industry suffered greatly from a series of events in the second half of the twentieth century: the Cod Wars with Iceland and establishment of the exclusive economic zone ended British access to rich North Atlantic fishing grounds, while the North Sea was badly overfishing, overfished and the European Common Fisheries Policy put strict quotas on catches to protect the almost depleted stocks. Grimsby is now transitioning to the processing of imported seafood and to offshore wind to replace its fishing fleet.Manufacturing and energy
Northern England has a strong export-based economy, with balance of trade, trade more balanced than the UK average, and the North East is the only region of England to regularly export more than it imports. Chemicals, vehicles, machinery and other manufactured goods make up the majority of Northern exports, just over half of which go to EU countries. Major manufacturing plants include car plants at Vauxhall Ellesmere Port, Halewood Body & Assembly, Jaguar Land Rover Halewood and Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK, Nissan Sunderland, the Leyland Trucks factory, the Hitachi Newton Aycliffe train plant, the Humber Refinery, Humber, Lindsey Oil Refinery, Lindsey and Stanlow Refinery, Stanlow oil refineries, the North East of England Process Industry Cluster, NEPIC cluster of chemical works based around Teesside, and the nuclear processing facilities at Springfields and Sellafield. Offshore drilling, Offshore oil and gas from North Sea and Irish Sea, and more recently offshore wind power, are significant components in Northern England's energy mix. Although Coal mining in the United Kingdom, deep-pit coal mining in the UK ended in 2015 with the closure of Kellingley Colliery, North Yorkshire, there are still several Open-pit coal mining in the United Kingdom, open-pit mines in the area. Shale gas is especially prevalent across Northern England, although plans to extract it through hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") have proven to be controversial.Retail and services
Around 10% of the Northern England workforce is employed in retail.IPPR North (2012), pp. 190–192 Of the List of supermarket chains in the United Kingdom, Big Four supermarkets in the UK, two – Asda and Morrisons – are based in the North. Northern England was the birthplace of the modern cooperative movement, and the Manchester-based Co-operative Group has the highest revenue of any firm in the North West.Wilson, J. F., Webster, A. and Vorberg-Rugh, R. (2013) "Building Co-operation: A business history of The Co-operative Group", Oxford University Press, Oxford The area is also home to many online retailers, with startups emerging around tech hubs in Northern cities. With urban regeneration, high-value service sector industries such as corporate services and financial services have taken root in Northern England, with major hubs around Leeds and Manchester. Call centres – attracted by low labour costs and a preference for Northern English accents among the public – have replaced heavy industry as major employers of unskilled workers, with more than 5% of workers in all Northern England regions working in one.High-tech and research
Together, the N8 research universities have over 190,000 students and contribute more to the Northern economy in terms of GVA than agriculture, car manufacturing or media. Discoveries and inventions at these universities have resulted in University spin-off, spin-offs worth hundreds of millions to local economies: the discovery of graphene at the University of Manchester produced the National Graphene Institute and the Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, while robotics research at the University of Sheffield led to the development of the Advanced Manufacturing Park. Recent decades have seen the growth of high-tech companies based around Northern England's major cities. There are eleven high-tech firms worth over $1 billion based in the region, and digital industries support around 300,000 jobs. Game development, online retail, health technology and analytics are among the major high-tech sectors in the North.Leisure and tourism
The expansion of the railway network in the second half of the nineteenth century meant most in the North lived within reach of the coast, and seaside towns saw a major tourism boom. By around 1870 Blackpool on the Lancashire coast had become overwhelmingly the most popular destination – not just for Northern families, but many from the Midlands and Scotland as well. Other resorts popular with Northerners included Morecambe in northern Lancashire, Whitley Bay near Newcastle, Whitby inMedia
Television
As part of a drive to reduce media centralisation in London, the BBC and ITV have moved much of their programme production to MediaCityUK in Salford and Channel 4 has moved its headquarters to Leeds. Of the four national evening soap operas, three are set and filmed in Northern England (''Coronation Street'' in Manchester, ''Emmerdale'' in the Yorkshire Dales and ''Hollyoaks'' in Liverpool but set in Chester) and these are important to the local TV industry – the commitment to ''Emmerdale'' saved ITV Yorkshire's Leeds Studios from closure. The region also has a reputation for drama serials and has produced some the most successful and acclaimed series of recent decades, including ''Boys from the Blackstuff'', ''Our Friends in the North'', ''Clocking Off'', ''Shameless (UK TV series), Shameless'', ''Waterloo Road (TV series), Waterloo Road'' and ''Last Tango in Halifax''.Newspapers
Since ''The Guardian'' (formerly ''The Manchester Guardian'') moved to London in 1964, no major national paper is based in the North, and Northern news stories tend to be poorly covered in the national press. ''The Yorkshire Post'' promotes itself as "Yorkshire's national paper" and covers some national and international stories, but is primarily focused on news from Yorkshire and the North East. An attempt in 2016 to create a dedicated North-focused national newspaper, ''24'', failed after six weeks. Across Northern England as a whole, ''The Sun (United Kingdom), The Sun'' is the best selling newspaper, but the Hillsborough disaster#The Sun, ongoing boycott around Merseyside following the newspaper's coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster has seen the paper fall behind both the ''Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Mirror'' in the North West. In general national readership in the North drags behind that of the South; the ''Mirror'' and the ''Daily Star (British newspaper), Daily Star'' are the only national papers with more readers in Northern England than in the South East and London. Local newspapers are the top-selling titles in both the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber, although Northern regional newspapers have seen steep declines in readership in recent years. Only seven daily Northern papers had circulation figures above 25,000 in June 2016: ''Manchester Evening News'', ''Liverpool Echo'', ''Hull Daily Mail'', ''Newcastle Chronicle'', ''The Yorkshire Post'' and ''The Northern Echo''.Communications
Manchester Network Access Point is the only internet exchange point in the UK outside London, and forms the main hub for the region. Household internet access in Northern England is at or above the UK average, but speeds and broadband penetration vary greatly. In 2013 the average speed in central Manchester was 60 Mbit/s, while in nearby Warrington the average speed was only 6.2 Mbit/s. Hull, which is unique in the UK in that KCOM Group, its telephone network was never nationalised, has simultaneously some of the fastest and slowest internet speeds in the country: many households have "ultrafast" fibre optic broadband as standard, but it is also one of only two places in the UK where over 30% of businesses receive less than 10 Mbit/s. Speeds are especially poor in the rural parts of the North, with many small towns and villages completely without high speed access. Some areas have therefore formed their own community enterprises, such as Broadband 4 Rural North in Lancashire and Cybermoor in Cumbria, to install high-speed internet connections. Mobile broadband coverage is similarly patchy, with 3G and 4G almost universal in cities but unavailable in large parts of Yorkshire, the North East and Cumbria.Culture and identity
The individual regions of the North have had their own identities and cultures for centuries, but with industrialisation, mass media and the opening of the North–South divide, a common Northern identity began to develop. This identity was initially a reactionary response to Southern prejudices—the North of the nineteenth century was largely depicted as a dirty, wild and uncultured place, even in sympathetic depictions such as Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel ''North and South (Gaskell novel), North and South''—but became an affirmation of what Northerners saw as their own personal strengths. Traits stereotypically associated with Northern England are Honesty, straight-talking, Grit (personality trait), grit and warmheartedness, as compared to the supposedly effete Southerners. Northern England—especially Lancashire, but also Yorkshire and the North East—has a tradition of matriarchy, matriarchal families, where the Housewife, woman of the house runs the home and controls the family's finances. This too has its roots in industrialisation, when mills offered well-paid work for women: during depressions when demand for coal and steel were low, women were often the main breadwinners. Northern women are still stereotyped as strong-willed and independent, or affectionately as Battle-axe (woman), battle-axes."It's grim up north"
The phrase ''it's grim up north'' is associated with coal mining, industrial mills, weather and the way of life in the north of England during the Victorian and post World War I eras, when mills and coal mining, as well railways, child labour and slums were common. The phrase is often used by those who are not from the north of England, who paint the north as being different to the south of England. The current mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham has quoted the north as being grim, but not a bad thing. The phrase was quoted in 1991 when the band The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu a.k.a. The KLF used it in relation to a lot of places in the north of England includingClothing
The North of England is often stereotypically represented through the clothing worn by working-class men and women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Working men would wear a heavy jacket and trousers held up by suspenders, braces, an overcoat, and a hat, typically a flat cap, while women would wear a dress, or a skirt and blouse, with an apron on top as protection from dirt; in colder months they would often wear a shawl or headscarf. The Maud (plaid), maud, a woollen plaid woven in a pattern of small black and white checks, was also popular in Northern England until the early twentieth century. If not wearing leather lace-up shoes, some men and women would have worn Clog (British), English clogs, which were hardwearing and had replaceable soles and tips. Factory workers tapping their feet in time with the click of machinery developed a type of folk clog dance referred to as ''Clog dancing, clogging'', which was intricately developed in the North. In the second half of the twentieth century, these traditional clothes fell out of fashion. Other styles such as "Casual (subculture), casual clobber" (mainland European designer clothing brought back by touring football fans) and Sportswear (fashion), sportswear became more popular, and the influence of Northern bands and football teams helped spread them across the country. In the twenty-first century, some traditional Northern items of clothing have begun to make a comeback – in particular, the flat cap.Cuisine
Impressions of Northern English cuisine are still shaped by the working-class diet of the early twentieth century, which was heavy on offal, high in calories and often not particularly healthy. Dishes such as black pudding, tripe, mushy peas and meat pie remain stereotypical Northern English foods in the national imagination. As a result, there is a concerted effort among Northern chefs to improve the region's image. Some Northern dishes such as Yorkshire pudding and Lancashire hotpot have spread across the UK, and only their names now hint at their origin. Among the Northern delicacies that have achieved Geographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union, Protected Geographical Status are Cumberland sausage, traditional Cumberland sausage, traditional Grimsby smoked fish, Swaledale cheese, Rhubarb Triangle, Yorkshire forced rhubarb and Wensleydale cheese, Yorkshire Wensleydale. The North is known for its often crumbly cheeses, of which Cheshire cheese is the earliest example. Unlike Southern cheeses like Cheddar cheese, Cheddar, Northern cheeses typically use uncooked milk and a pre-salted curd pressed under enormous weights, resulting in a moist, sharp-tasting cheese. Wensleydale, another crumbly cheese, is unusual in that it is often served as a side to sweet cakes, which are themselves well represented in Northern England. Parkin (cake), Parkin, an oatmeal cake with black treacle and ginger, is a traditional treat across the North on Bonfire Night, and the fruity scone-like singing hinny and fat rascal are popular in the North East and Yorkshire respectively. While a variety of beers are popular across Northern England, the region is especially associated with brown ales such as Newcastle Brown Ale, Double Maxim Beer Company, Double Maxim and Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. Beer in the North is usually served with a thick Beer head, head which accentuates the nutty, malty flavours preferred in Northern beers. On the non-alcoholic side, the North – in particular, Lancashire – was the hub of the temperance bar movement which popularised soft drinks such as dandelion and burdock, Tizer and Vimto. According to ''The Tab'', the bakery chain Greggs is an integral part of Northern identity, using the number of people per Greggs as an indicator as to whether a town should be considered Northern. Immigration to Northern England has shaped its cuisine. The Teesside parmo is one example, derived from chicken parmigiana, escalope Parmesan brought to the area by an Italian-American immigrant and adapted to the region's taste. There are large Chinatowns in Chinatown, Liverpool, Liverpool, Chinatown, Manchester, Manchester and Chinatown, Newcastle, Newcastle, and communities from the Indian subcontinent in all major towns. Bradford has won the Federation of Specialist Restaurant's "Curry Capital" title six years in a row as of 2016, while the Curry Mile in Manchester formerly had the largest concentration of curry restaurants in the UK and now offers a wide range of South Asian cuisine, South Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine.Music
Traditional folk music in Northern England is a combination of styles of England and Scotland – what is now called the Anglo-Scottish border ballad was once prevalent as far south as Lancashire. In the Middle Ages, much of Northern folk was accompanied by bagpipes, with styles including the Lancashire bagpipe, Yorkshire bagpipe and Northumbrian smallpipes. These disappeared in the early nineteenth century from the industrialising south of the region, but remain in the music of Northumbria. The British brass band tradition began in Northern England at around the same time: the dismissal of the Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire military bands after the Napoleonic Wars, combined with the desire of industrial communities to better themselves, led to the founding of civilian bands. These bands provided entertainment at community events and led protest marches during the era of Radicalism (historical)#Popular agitation, radical agitation. Although the style has since spread across much of Great Britain, brass bands remain a stereotype of the North, and the Whit Friday#Brass band contests, Whit Friday brass band contests draw hundreds of bands from across the UK and further afield. Northern England also has a thriving popular music scene. Influential movements include Merseybeat from the Liverpool area, which produced The Beatles, Northern soul, which brought Motown to England, and Madchester, the precursor to the rave scene. Across the Pennines, Sheffield is the birthplace of influential electronic pop bands from Cabaret Voltaire (band), Cabaret Voltaire to Pulp (band), Pulp, the New Yorkshire indie rock movement of the 2000s gave the country the Kaiser Chiefs and the Arctic Monkeys, and Teesside has a rock scene stretching from Chris Rea to Maxïmo Park. The press frequently frames music stories and reviews in terms of cultural and class differences between North and South, notably in the 1960s Beatles and Rolling Stones rivalry, rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the 1990s Britpop#"The Battle of Britpop", Battle of Britpop between Oasis (band), Oasis and Blur (band), Blur.Sport
Sport has been both one of the most unifying cultural forces in Northern England and, thanks to local rivalries such as the Lancashire–Yorkshire Roses rivalry, one of the most divisive. As huge numbers of people moved into recently built cities with little cultural heritage, local sports teams offered the population a sense of place and identity that was otherwise absent. Adapted from Many early Northern sports players were working class and needed to miss work to play, with their teams compensating them for lost wages. By contrast, Southern teams, drawing from the traditions of Public school (United Kingdom), public schools and Oxbridge, put great emphasis on Amateur sports, amateurism and the Southern-dominated governing bodies forbade payments to players. This tension shaped the sports of association football and cricket (sport), cricket, and led to the schism between the two main forms of Rugby football, rugby. The North is also associated with the animal sports of dog racing with whippets, pigeon racing and ferret legging, although these are now far more popular in stereotype than in reality. Manchester hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games, which left it a legacy of sporting facilities including the City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester Aquatics Centre and the National Cycling Centre, headquarters of British Cycling. The List of Tour de France Grands Départs, Grand Départ for the 2014 Tour de France was in Leeds, and every year since Yorkshire has hosted the Tour de Yorkshire cycling event, part of the UCI Europe Tour. Tyneside meanwhile hosts the Great North Run, the UK's biggest mass-participation sporting event and the most popular half marathon in the world.Association football
The first football club in the UK was Sheffield F.C., founded in 1857. Early Northern football teams tended to adopt the Sheffield Rules rather than the Laws of the Game (association football), Football Association Rules, but the two codes were merged in 1877. Many of the innovations of Sheffield Rules are now part of the global game, including Corner kick, corners, throw-ins, and Indirect free kick, free kicks for fouls. 1883 FA Cup Final, In 1883 Blackburn Olympic F.C., Blackburn Olympic, a team composed mainly of factory workers, became the first Northern team to win the FA Cup, and the next year Preston North End F.C., Preston North End won an FA Cup match against London-based Upton Park F.C., Upton Park. Upton Park protested that Preston had broken FA rules by paying their players. In response, Preston withdrew from the competition and fellow Lancashire clubs Burnley F.C., Burnley and Great Lever F.C., Great Lever followed suit. The protest gathered momentum to the point where more than 30 clubs, predominantly from the North, announced that they would set up a rival British Football Association if the FA did not permit professionalism. A schism was avoided in July 1885 when Professionalism in association football, professionalism was formally legalised in English football. The English Football League, Football League was founded in 1888, and marked its independence from the London-based Football Association (FA) by establishing headquarters in Preston – the League retained a Northern identity even after it accepted several Southern teams into its ranks. Organised Women's association football, women's football followed as the workforces of majority-female factories of Northern England in the First World War entered the 1917–18 Tyne, Wear & Tees Munition Girls Cup – the world's first women's football tournament. However, the FA did not support women's football and Women's football in England#Banning, decline, and reappearance, banned it altogether in 1921. Intense List of sports rivalries in the United Kingdom, local derbies between neighbouring teams mean that there is less of a North–South rivalry than in some other sports. Many of the powerhouses of English football came from the North – as of the 2020–21 Premier League, 2020–21 season, of the 123 top-flight league titles since 1888, 83 (67%) have been won by teams based north of Crewe. Since this article, which quotes 116 league titles, there have been seven more titles, four won by a Northern team. Everton F.C., Everton, Liverpool F.C., Liverpool, Manchester United F.C., Manchester United and Manchester City F.C., Manchester City are among the mainstays of the Premier League, while teams like Blackburn Rovers F.C., Blackburn Rovers, Middlesbrough F.C., Middlesbrough, Newcastle United F.C., Newcastle United and Sunderland A.F.C., Sunderland have had more inconsistent runs in recent years, regularly being promoted and relegated from the top flight. Northern England is also the birthplace of the largest proportion the country's top players – as of Euro 2016, 537 Northerners had played for the England national football team, England team, compared to 266 Midlanders and 367 Southerners, and 15 of the 23 man squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, 2018 World Cup, as well as 14 of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, 2019 Women's World Cup squad, were born in the region.Rugby football
The Rugby Football Union, which enforced amateurism, suspended teams who compensated their players for missed work and injury, leading teams from Lancashire, Yorkshire and surrounding areas to split away in 1895 and form the Rugby Football League. Over time, the RFU and RFL adopted different rules and the two forms of the game – rugby union and rugby league – diverged. Rugby league's stronghold remains Northern England along the "M62 motorway, M62 corridor" between Liverpool and Hull. As of the Super League XXVI, 2021 season, 11 of the 12 teams in the Super League (the highest level of rugby league in the Northern Hemisphere) are from Northern England, with one team from France, and the 14-team Championship (rugby league), Championship below it has 12 Northern teams, one London team and 1 French team. Rugby union was not entirely driven from Northern England, and in the 1970s the region was home to several strong teams. The high-water mark of rugby union in Northern England was the 1979 New Zealand rugby union tour of England, Scotland and Italy, 1979 New Zealand tour during which the English Northern Division was the only team to defeat the All Blacks. In the 21st century the region's club sides have become less popular, with association football, cricket and rugby league attracting more spectators and talent. In the 2020–21 Premiership Rugby, 2020–21 season, Sale Sharks and Newcastle Falcons play in the Premiership Rugby, English Premiership, and Doncaster R.F.C. play in the RFU Championship.Cricket
Cricket has a strong following in Northern England, and three counties are represented by first-class cricket, first-class county cricket teams: Durham County Cricket Club, Durham, Lancashire County Cricket Club, Lancashire and Yorkshire County Cricket Club, Yorkshire. The Roses Match (named for the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York) between Lancashire and Yorkshire is one of the hardest fought rivalries in the sport – the pride of both sides, and their determination not to lose, resulted in the teams developing a slow, stubborn and defensive style that proved unpopular elsewhere in the country. The London-based Marylebone Cricket Club, which controlled the game at the time, selected few Northern players for Test cricket, Test matches, and this was perceived as a snub to their playing style – the anger united Lancashire and Yorkshire against the South and helped cast a shared Northern identity that transcended the Roses rivalry. This divide was illustrated in the 1924 County Championship, when Yorkshire beat London-based Middlesex County Cricket Club, Middlesex to claim the title. Surrey County Cricket Club, Surrey accused Yorkshire of scuffing the pitch and intimidating the bowling (cricket), bowlers, while the match with Middlesex was so vicious that the team threatened to never play in Yorkshire again. The Lancashire captain Jack Sharp on the other hand was quoted as saying "I'm real glad a rose won it. Red or white, it doesn't matter." Durham are a recent addition to top-flight cricket, having only achieved first-class status in 1992, but have won the County Championship three times. Although Yorkshire and Lancashire were traditionally more relaxed about professionalism than other counties, cricket did not see the same regional schisms on the topic that rugby and football did – there were debates over amateur status in first-class cricket, but these tensions were given release in the Gentlemen v Players fixture. Nevertheless, the annual North v South games were among the most popular and competitive in the sport, running annually from 1849 until 1900 and intermittently thereafter.Politics
Northern England, as the first area in the world to industrialise, was the birthplace of much modern political thought. Marxism and, more generally, socialism were shaped by reports into the lives of the Northern working class, from Friedrich Engels' ''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' to George Orwell's ''The Road to Wigan Pier''. Meanwhile, enterprise and trade at the North's ports influenced the birth ofReligion
Christianity
Christianity has been the largest religion in the region since the Early Middle Ages; its existence in Britain dates back to the late Roman era and the arrival of Celtic Christianity. The Holy Island of Lindisfarne played an essential role in the Christianisation of Northumbria, after Aidan of Lindisfarne, Aidan from Connacht founded a monastery there as the first Bishop of Lindisfarne at the request of King Oswald of Northumbria, Oswald. It is known for the creation of the Lindisfarne Gospels and remains a place of pilgrimage. Saint Cuthbert, a monk of Lindisfarne, was venerated from Nottinghamshire to Cumberland, and is today sometimes named the patron saint of Northern England. The Synod of Whitby saw Northumbria break from Celtic Christianity and return to the Roman Catholic church, as Computus, calculations of Easter and tonsure rules were brought into line with those of Rome. After the English Reformation Northern England became a centre of Catholicism, and Irish migration to Great Britain, Irish immigration increased its numbers further, especially in North West cities like Liverpool and Manchester. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the area underwent a Christian revival, religious revival that ultimately produced Primitive Methodism in the United Kingdom, Primitive Methodism, and at its peak in the 19th century Methodism was the dominant faith in much of Northern England. As of 2016, the list of places of worship registered for marriage for Northern England included at least 1,960 that are Methodist or Independent Methodist Connexion, Independent Methodist, 1,200 Roman Catholic, 370 United Reformed Church, United Reformed, 310 Baptist or Particular Baptist, 250 Jehovah's Witness and 240 Salvation Army, as well as many hundreds of churches from smaller denominations. Not all places of worship are registered, and some defunct churches remain on the list. In the ecclesiastical administration of the Church of England the entire North is covered by the Province of York, which is represented by the Archbishop of York – the second-highest figure in the Church after the Archbishop of Canterbury. The unusual situation of having two archbishops at the top of Church hierarchy suggests that Northern England was seen as a ''sui generis''. Likewise, with the exception of parts of the Diocese of Shrewsbury and Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham, Diocese of Nottingham, the North is covered in Catholic Church in England and Wales, Roman Catholic Church administration by the Province of Liverpool, represented by the Archbishop of Liverpool.Other faiths
Small Jewish communities arose in Beverley, Doncaster, Grimsby, Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster, Newcastle, and York in the wake of the Norman Conquest but suffered massacres and pogroms, of which the largest was the York Massacre in 1190. Jews were forcibly banished from England by the 1290 Edict of Expulsion until the Resettlement of the Jews in England in the seventeenth century, and the first synagogue in the North appeared in Liverpool in 1753. History of the Jews in Manchester, Manchester also has a long-standing Jewish community: the now-demolished 1857 Manchester Reform Synagogue was the second Movement for Reform Judaism, Reform synagogue in the country, and Greater Manchester has the only eruv in the United Kingdom outside London. Traditionally, there is also a large Jewish presence in Gateshead. In total, there are 84 synagogues in Northern England registered for marriages. Spiritualism flourished in Northern England in the nineteenth century, in part as a backlash to the fundamentalist Primitive Methodist movement and in part driven by the influence of Owenism, Owenist socialism. There remain 220 Spiritualist churches registered in the North, of which 40 identify as Spiritualism (beliefs)#Christian Spiritualism, Christian Spiritualist. The first mosque in the United Kingdom was founded by the convert Abdullah Quilliam in the Liverpool Muslim Institute in 1889. Today, there are around 500 mosques in Northern England. Indian religions are also represented: there are at least 45 gurdwaras, of which the largest is the Sikh Temple in Leeds, and 30 mandirs, of which the largest is Bradford Lakshmi Narayan Hindu Temple.Transport
Transport in the North has been shaped by the Pennines, creating strong north–south axes along each coast and an east–west axis across the moorland passes of the southern Pennines. Northern England is a centre of freight transport and handles around one third of all British cargo. Both passenger and freight links between Northern cities remain poor, which is a major weakness of the Northern economy. The passenger transport executive (PTE) has become a major player in the organisation of public transport within Northern city regions; of the six PTEs in England, five (Transport for Greater Manchester, Merseytravel, South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, Travel South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, Nexus Tyne and Wear and West Yorkshire Metro) are located in the North. These coordinate bus services, local trains and light rail in their regions. Following the passage of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016, Transport for the North became a statutory body in 2018 with powers to coordinate services and offer integrated ticketing throughout the region.Road
The Preston By-pass, opened in 1958, was the first motorway in the UK, and today an extensive network connects the major cities of the North. The main western route through the North is the M6 motorway, M6, part of a chain of motorways from London to Glasgow, while the main eastern motorway is the M1 motorway, M1/A1(M) motorway, A1(M), which runs as far north as Newcastle. The M62 motorway, M62 links Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull across the Pennines. Other trans-Pennine roads are comparatively minor, and the lack of any dual-carriageway connection between the east and west coasts anywhere in England north of the M62 has been identified by the Department for Transport as a significant hindrance to the Northern economy. In many cases, modern roads still follow ancient routes: the M62 motorway effectively duplicates the Roman roads in Britain, Roman road between York and Chester, while the Great North Road (Great Britain), Great North Road, the stagecoach route from London to Scotland, became the modern A1 road (Great Britain), A1 road. Buses are an important part of the Northern transport mix, with bus ridership above the England and Wales average in all three Northern regions. Many of the municipal bus company, municipal bus companies were located in Northern England, and the region saw intense competition and bus wars following Bus deregulation in Great Britain, deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s. Increasing car ownership in the same era caused bus use to decline, although it remains higher than in most areas of the South.Rail
The North of England pioneered rail transport. Milestones include the 1758 Middleton Railway in Leeds, the first railway authorised by Act of Parliament and the oldest continually operating in the world; the 1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first public railway to use steam locomotives; and the 1830 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first modern main line. Today the region retains many of its original railway lines, including the East Coast Main Line, East Coast and West Coast Main Line, West Coast main lines and the Cross Country Route. Passenger numbers on Northern routes increased over 50% between 2004 and 2016, and Northern England handles over half of total UK rail freight, but infrastructure is poorly funded compared to Southern railways: railways in London received £5426 per resident in 2015 while those in the North East received just £223 per resident, and journeys between major cities are slow and overcrowded. To combat this, the Department of Transport has devolved many of its powers to Rail North, an alliance of local authorities from the Scottish Borders down to Staffordshire which manages the Northern (train operating company), Northern Rail and TransPennine Express franchises that operate many routes in Northern England. Meanwhile, new build such as the Northern Hub around Manchester, High Speed 2 from Manchester and Leeds to London and Northern Powerhouse Rail from Liverpool to Hull and Newcastle is planned to increase capacity on important Northern routes and decrease travel times. The first tram line in the United Kingdom was built in Birkenhead and Birkenhead Corporation Tramways, opened on 30 August 1860 (partially open intermittently as Wirral Tramway, a heritage tramway). Trams turned out to be especially well suited for Northern cities, with their growing working-class suburbs, and by the turn of the century, most Northern towns had an extensive interconnected electric tram network. At the network's height, it was possible to travel entirely by tram from Liverpool Pier Head to the village of Summit, outside Rochdale, a distance of , and a gap of only separated the North-Western network from the West Yorkshire network. Starting in the 1930s, these were largely replaced by motor buses and trolley buses. With the closure of Sheffield Tramway in 1960 and Glasgow Corporation Tramways, Glasgow Tramway in 1962, Blackpool Tramway – popular as a tourist attraction as much as a means of transport – was left as the only public tram system in the UK until the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992. Today there are four light rail systems in the North – Blackpool Tramway, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram and Tyne & Wear Metro.Air
Manchester Airport serves as the main international hub for Northern England and is the busiest airport anywhere in the UK outside London, handling 27.8 million people in 2017. In total, there are eight international airports in the North; these are (in descending order of passenger traffic) Manchester Airport, Manchester, Newcastle International Airport, Newcastle, Liverpool John Lennon Airport, Liverpool John Lennon, Leeds Bradford Airport, Leeds Bradford, Doncaster Sheffield Airport, Doncaster Sheffield, Humberside Airport, Humberside, Teesside Airport, Teesside and Carlisle Lake District Airport, Carlisle Lake District. Many of these airports were developed during the boom in Low-cost carrier, low-cost air travel during the early 2000s, but have suffered since the Great Recession – Teesside is running at just 3% of its maximum capacity, and Blackpool Airport closed as an international airport in 2014. The devolution of Air Passenger Duty to Scotland represents a further possible threat to Northern English airports, allowing Scottish airports to offer cheaper flights than their English rivals. Few Spoke–hub distribution paradigm, spoke flights operate between Northern airports and the national hubs at London Heathrow Airport, Heathrow and London Gatwick Airport, Gatwick, putting further strain on the smaller Northern airports and forcing connecting passengers to travel via continental European airports. The planned High Speed 2 station at Manchester Airport will offer direct high-speed services to London, allowing spare capacity at Manchester Airport to take some of the flights which currently serve busy London airports.Water
The first modern canal in England was Sankey Canal, Sankey Brook, opened in 1757 to connect Liverpool's ports to the St Helens, Merseyside, St Helens coalfields. By 1777, the Trent and Mersey Canal, Grand Trunk Canal had opened, linking the rivers Mersey and Trent and making it possible for boats to travel directly from Liverpool on the west coast to Hull on the east coast. Manchester, inland, was connected to the Irish Sea by the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, although the canal never saw the success that was hoped for. The North retains many navigable canals, including the Cheshire Ring, Cheshire, North Pennine Ring, North Pennine and South Pennine Ring, South Pennine canal rings, although they are now used mostly for pleasure rather than transport – the Aire and Calder Navigation, which carries over 2 million tons of oil, sand and gravel per year, is a rare exception. Many Northern coastal towns were built on trade, and retain large sea ports. The Humber ports of Port of Grimsby, Grimsby and Port of Immingham, Immingham (counted as a single port for statistical purposes) are the busiest in the UK in terms of tonnage, serving 59.1 million tons as of 2015, and Teesport and the Port of Liverpool are also among the country's largest – in total, 35% of British freight was shipped through Northern ports. Roll-on/roll-off ferries offer passenger and freight connections to the Isle of Man and Ireland along the west coast, while east coast ports connect to Belgium and the Netherlands, although Northern ports handle only a small percentage of the UK's vehicle traffic. Liverpool Cruise Terminal opened in 2007, cruises also operate out of Port of Hull and Newcastle International Ferry Terminal.See also
* Black Country * Cornwall * Devolution to the North of England * East Anglia * Greater London * Home counties * The Midlands * Southern England * Welsh Marches * West Country * West of EnglandExplanatory notes
References
Citations
General and cited references
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *Further reading
* * {{Authority control Northern England, Cultural regions Geography of England Northumbria Regions of England