URPoint Details
The church, Georgian and Victorian houses are all that is left of the past, although there is still a busy fish dock and market
The place name derives from Old English heort ("hart"), referring to stags seen, and pol (pool), a pool of drinking water which they were known to use
At the beginning of the 11th Century the name had evolved into Herterpol, and post Norman Conquest the name of the village sited there evolved in Middle English as: Hart-le-pool ("The Pool of the Stags"). Archaeological evidence has been found below the current high tide mark that indicates that an ancient post-glacial forest by the sea existed in the area during this period.
Industrialisation and the start of a shipbuilding industry in the later part of the 19th century caused Hartlepool to be a target for the Imperial German Navy at the beginning of the First World War. A bombardment of 1,150 shells on 16 December 1914 resulted in the death of 117 people.
Hartlepool began as an Anglian settlement, and a town developed in the 7th Century A.D. sited around Hartlepool Abbey, which had been founded in 640 A.D. by the Irish Christian priest Saint Aidan upon a headland overlooking a natural harbour and the
- Type:
- Landmark