Ashington
Encyclopedia : A : AS : ASH : Ashington
- redirect
- For other places called Ashington, see Ashington (disambiguation)
Ashington was built up from being a small hamlet in the 1840s, as the Duke of Portland constructed housing to encourage workers escaping the potato famine to come and work at the local collieries he was founding. As in many other parts of Britain, "deep pit" coal mining in the area declined during the 1980s and 1990s leaving just one colliery, Ellington, in production until January 2005. During the peak time of coal-mining, it was considered to be the "world's largest coal-mining village". There is now a debate about whether Ashington should be referred to as a town or a village - if accepted as a village it would be the largest village in England.
Famous footballers Jackie Milburn, Bobby Charlton, Jackie Charlton and England fast bowler Steve Harmison, and Sir John Hall (businessman) were all born in Ashington. The town is also home to Ashington A.F.C., who were previously members of The Football League.
Ashington is also the name of a village in West Sussex. The mining workers of Ashington in Northumberland gave a 'Hooky mat' to their friends in West Sussex, where it is displayed in Ashington village hall.
An Ashington urban district was created in 1896 covering part of the parish of Ashington and Sheepwash and part of the parish of Bothal Demesne. It took in Hirst in 1914, and then Sheepwash, most of Woodhorne and the remainder of Bothal Demesne in 1935. The urban district survived until 1974 when under the Local Government Act 1972 it became part of the Wansbeck district. [link]
Inhabitants of Ashington have a distictive accent and dialect, known as Pitmatic. This varies slightly from Geordie.
See also
See also List of towns in England.External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.