Stockton-on-Tees

Stockton-on-Tees, often simply referred to as Stockton, is a market town in the Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority borough of County Durham, England. With a population of 84,815 in the 2021 UK census. It is part of the Teesside and the devolved Tees Valley area, on the northern banks of the River Tees. The Tees was straightened in the early 1800s for larger ships to access the town. The ports have since relocated closer to the North Sea and ships are no longer able to sail from the sea to the town due to the Tees Barrage, which was installed to manage tidal flooding. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, on which coal was ferried to the town for shipment, served the port during early part of the Industrial Revolution. The railway was also the world's first permanent steam-locomotive-powered passenger railway. Stockton is an Anglo-Saxon place name with the common ending ton, meaning farm, or homestead. Stock is thought by some to derive from the Anglo-Saxon Stocc, meaning log, tree trunk, or wooden post. Stockton could therefore mean a farm built of logs. This is disputed because when Stocc forms the first part of a place name, it usually indicates a derivation from the similar word Stoc, meaning cell, monastery, or place. Stoc in place name such as Stoke or Stow usually indicates farms which belonged to a manor or religious house. It is thought that Stockton fell into this category, and perhaps the name is an indication that Stockton was an outpost of Durham or Norton which were both important Anglo-Saxon centres. This is a matter of dispute, but Stockton was a constituent part of Norton until the eighteenth century, when it became an independent parish in its own right. Today the roles have been reversed, and Norton has been incorporated into Stockton. Stockton is reportedly the home of the fossilised remains of the most northerly hippopotamus ever discovered. In 1958, an archeological dig north-west of the town uncovered a 125,000-year-old hippo's molar tooth.