I AM NOWHERE, I AM HERE

I was born and raised in Hartlepool, a coastal town in County Durham, North East England.

I travelled through like the forager, assembling a sense of self. Now I return like a stranger, to see what I have left behind. I am overwhelmed to find each landscape so laced with my past; like a veil of dust I must now dust off. My life is strewn across the neighbourhood streets and scattered in the leaves of the parks. My association with each place was a feature I had not before sought out to interrogate, but it had inevitably always been my only lens.

Here I am now, walking on foot, questioning the ground. Looking to the trees and asking what secrets they hide in their darkest greens. And peering beyond, at the imitation of the next town, over the hill in between the mist, realising the sight is too great for me. There is too much to see in this landscape. I struggle to place myself.

 

To start at the beginning, I must begin before my time; to the rise and fall of the town. From a small fishing town in the 12th Century, to a busy port the following century. By the early 19th century, Hartlepool was somewhat of a honeypot site. In 1835, collieries and modern docks were built. Around the West Hartlepool Dock Company, a new town rapidly grew known as West Hartlepool (Old and West Hartlepool were unified later in 1967).

Industrialisation in the latter part of the 19th century saw the emergence of Hartlepool’s shipbuilding industry which was integral to the town’s identity and proved to be important sites for both World Wars. But in the decline of heavy manufacturing during the 1960’s, the shipbuilding docks were closed; the last ship to be constructed in Hartlepool named ‘Blanchland’ left the slips in 1961. In 1977, British Steel closed Hartlepool steelworks at the detriment of 1500 jobs and the cooling towers were demolished the following year. The town once again plunged into high levels of unemployment in a de-industrialisation which spanned over a decade (The Times, 1977).  The 1980’s marked its peak, with 30 percent of the town’s working-age population unemployed- the highest rate in the UK. Hartlepool still remains in a state of disrepair. Despite such feats as building the Angel of the North in 1994, the steelworks now only make pipes and has passed through several hands in recent years, continuing to face uncertain times. Today Hartlepool relies on the engineering industry with the Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station being still the largest employer in the town. Tourism also saw major investment at the end of the 20th century in the strenuous efforts to re-brand Hartlepool. During the 1990’s, the Marina was redeveloped from a former dockland, Summerhill Conservation Area was created, Hartlepool Museum opened in 1995, and Hartlepool Art Gallery the following year (Lambert, 2010).

Despite this, Hartlepool like much of the North East failed to fully recovered post-industry through a notable lack of Government investment and increasing social depravity- further vilified in national media. Hartlepool has an employment rate of 63.4 percent- standing as the lowest rate in the North East and the fourth lowest in the country (Hartlepool Borough Council). The rate of claiming any benefit is more than 25 percent higher than the national average. The clusters of greying council estates, new-builds on top of landfills and abandoned brown fields visually map a clear socio-economic relationship to place.

The landscape reflects a forgotten edge-land, in limbo between the devolved and evolved, nature and man-made: presenting scenic juxtapositions and human disparity. As a town stripped of its former shipbuilding and steel-making identity, remnants of urban decay lacerate the landscape as scars of areas once thriving now abandoned. I too feel the necessity to abandon my hometown in the hopes of finding better opportunities. As much as I am comforted by this place, I grow evermore displaced. But I struggle to place myself in any other place. Returning home once again, I hope I can re-identify with this town, and in turn, map my own identity here.