Billingham is a town and civil parish in County Durham, England. The town is on the north side of the River Tees and is governed as part of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority. It had a population of 33,927, in the 2021 census.City population: Statistics, maps and charts
The settlement has existed since Anglo-Saxon times as a village. A post-Second World War town centre was built north of the old village centre on the town's grange. It was a township, with an urban district, from 1923, until 1968, when it was absorbed into the County Borough of Teesside, and later part of the county of Cleveland.
Billingham is home to the Billingham Manufacturing Plant which is a major producer of chemicals for agriculture.
History The town was settled by Angles and has a name either meaning Billa's people's home or bill-shaped hill people's home. The town was in one of the Northumbrian regiones. This regione is thought to cover much of the land of northern Teesdale and had late Viking rule. It was later broken up with Billingham in the Hartness district, then into a small shire called Billinghamshire.
St Cuthbert's Parish Church has elements dating back to the late-7th/early-8th-century in its nave and a tower dating c. AD 1000. There is also a 7th-century grave-marker from the church in the British Museum.The British Museum – Gravestone Retrieved 15 October 2020
Chemical industry and ICI
The town's chemical industry started in the early 1900s. In 1917, the town was chosen to be the site of a new chemical works supplying ammonia for the war. However, the plant was not completed until 1920, after the war had ended. The Brunner Mond Company took over the site and converted it to manufacture fertilisers. In December 1926, Brunner Mond merged with three other chemical companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), who took control of the plant. With the World Wars creating a high demand for explosives it led to a massive expansion of Billingham and post-Second World War a new town centre was built. ICI began to produce plastics at Billingham in 1966.
Aldous Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant at ICI and gave a detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the novel by this Billingham visit. Henry Thorold in the Shell Guide to County Durham states:
From 1971 to 1988, ICI operated a small General Atomics TRIGA Mark I nuclear reactor at its Billingham factory to produce radio-isotopes for use in process instrumentation such as level measurement devices. In addition to its own on-site coal-fired power station, ICI also operated the coal-fired North Tees Power Station, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, on the banks of the Tees to provide electricity for its plants. The latter was eventually decommissioned and demolished (at a ceremony attended by Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley) in 1987. The site of the power station is now Billingham Reach Industrial Estate, an international wharf owned by Able UK Ltd. ICI no longer operates in Billingham, having sold many of its businesses during the restructuring of the company in the 1990s. Some of the company's former manufacturing plants are still in operation, run by other chemical companies. Several chemical plants close to the town were subject to explosions and leaks in 2006 and 2007.
Following the fragmentation and ultimate loss of the chemicals conglomerate ICI, the Billingham Chemical Industrial park became a multi-company facility. The chemical, biotechnology and engineering companies that continue to operate at Billingham are members of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC). They include GrowHow, Johnson Matthey, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and Fruitarom. Other members of the NEPIC Cluster operate from the 62-acre (25 hectares) Belasis Business Park in Billingham such as Cambridge Research Biochemicals, ABB and Biochemica. Growhow not only manufacture fertilisers & industrial chemicals in Bilingham, but also capture the CO2 for use in the food and drink industry. Tomatoes are grown in Billingham by North Bank Growers using the recoverable energy from the Billingham complex, which further reduces the area's carbon footprint.
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies have a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Billingham. Subject to regulatory approval, at least 60 million doses of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine will be manufactured there for the UK government from 2021.
Anhydrite mine In 1983, NIREX announced a proposal to use the disused anhydrite mine as a site for the disposal of intermediate level nuclear waste. There was a certain amount of opposition to this, led by Billingham Against Nuclear Dumping (BAND), as despite the suitability of the site in geological terms, it was very close to a large population centre.BBC: Waste to be stored in Billingham anhydrite mine. News.bbc.co.uk, Retrieved: 15 October 2020 Subsequently, in 1985, the plans were dropped. In 2007, more recent plans to reopen the mines for "use as a long-term disposal facility for low hazard waste" were met with similar opposition and a petition of 3,200 signatures against the mine's opening was presented to the local authority.
In March 2011, Stockton Council's planning committee accepted an application from NPL Waste Management to reopen the mine for the disposal of hazardous waste. NPL planned to convert the mine into a 4,000,000 cubic metre waste storage facility receiving over 100,000 tonnes of waste annually.
Governance
Municipal
Between 1923 and 1968, Billingham had its own urban district council which built, among other things, the Billingham Forum, Kennedy Gardens and Billingham Golf Club (the UK's first municipally owned club). Billingham's last mayor was Octavious Evitts in 1952.
It was subsumed into the County Borough of Teesside in 1968. In 1974, Teesside County Borough was replaced by the County of Cleveland, which had four districts: Hartlepool, Langbaurgh-on-Tees, Middlesbrough and Stockton-on-Tees. Billingham was then part of Stockton-on-Tees. In 1996, with the abolition of Cleveland county, Billingham remained within the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees which became a unitary authority.
Town parish
Billingham civil parish is the largest area and size in the Stockton Borough. Other than the town itself, areas of the parish include Haverton Hill, Port Clarence, Cowpen Bewley and Seal Sands.
A petition to Stockton Borough Council and referendum held in 2003 both gave assent to a proposal for Billingham to become reparished. The Department for Communities and Local Government and the Electoral Commission issued orders for the creation of a Billingham parish and the setting up of a new town council in February 2007. It is funded by a precept of £80,000. The first elections for the new Town Council were held on 3 May 2007.
Geography
Protected and green spaces Billingham Beck Valley Country Park (also known as Billingham Bottoms) was landscaped from a reclaimed industrial waste tip and has steadily grown to include former grazing land to form a site including wetland habitats. Designated as a Local Nature Reserve by English Nature in 1992, it won a Green Flag Award in 2005. The beck itself is one of the major tributaries of the River Tees and has a tidal reach around the former ICI site.
Town
The town is effectively split into two separate areas by name: Old Billingham (the area around the village green adjacent to St Cuthbert's church and built up around the ICI works) and the more planned estates that have spread out since the 1950s, increasing the town's size and borders towards the villages of Wolviston and Cowpen Bewley to the point of almost incorporating them.
Billingham Town Centre provides the town with national retail chains as well as several charity shops, estate agents and banks, with a market featuring in the centre every Monday and Friday. The town centre lacks some services but Stockton town centre is less than away and Middlesbrough town centre is also less than away.
In 1967, Associated Dairies' fledgling stores division, launched in 1965, opened its first store outside of its Yorkshire heartland in the town centre. Asda Billingham was Asda'a first store to open in the North East and is now the oldest continuously trading Asda supermarket in the UK.
In March 2012 it was confirmed that a Wetherspoons public house would be opened in the town centre, along with a Fulton Frozen Foods superstore.
In August each year the town centre hosts the Billingham International Folklore Festival. Dancers and musicians perform traditional and contemporary dance.
In November 2013, a time capsule was buried in front of 'The Family' statue in Billingham town centre under a stone with the inscription 'FOREVER FORWARD 30 11 2013'. The capsule is not to be unearthed until the year 2078.
Demography
The population of Billingham, according to the census of 1801, was 962. This number increased slowly until the beginning of the First World War, when the need for nitrates to use in explosives brought about a significant burst of growth for the town. In 1917, after Billingham was chosen as the site for the production of synthetic ammonia due to its good transport links and access to the resources needed, the population of the town nearly doubled in just a few years from 4500 to 8000. After the war, the site was bought by Brunner Mond and converted for use in the production of agricultural fertiliser. Brunner Mond soon merged with a number of other companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries. This furthered the growth of Billingham's population, which reached nearly 18,000 by 1931. With the onset of the Second World War, synthetic ammonia for explosives was once again in demand, further sustaining the town's development.
During the latter half of the 20th century, the population of Billingham slowed significantly due to the industrial decline of the area. Furthermore, Billingham attracted relatively few immigrants after its de-industrialisation. Across the wards that make up Billingham, just 2.3% of the population at the 2011 Census were born outside the UK, compared to a national average of 13%. The population was also recorded as 99% white.
Population data for 1801–1971 is available at Britain Through Time.Britain Through Time, Visionofbritain.org.uk
+ Population of Billingham Year 1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 Population 962 940 1154 1212 1652 1811 n/a n/a 1488 2675 Year 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 Population 3729 4463 8058 17972 n/a 23993 32139 n/a n/a n/a Year 2001 Population 35765
Education Billingham is served by two secondary schools: Northfield School, a specialist sports college, and St Michael's Catholic Academy, a specialist Science Catholic academy. Northfield Marsh House site, formerly Campus, was closed in 2012.
Bede College has served the town for several years, and attracts students from Hartlepool and Stockton, consistently achieving higher results than nearby colleges in Stockton or Middlesbrough. Formerly one of the smallest colleges in the UK, with under 400 students, its recent amalgamation with Stockton Riverside College and relocation to an adjacent new campus has seen its student body increase significantly. As part of the new campus, the college has also gained its own sports facilities.
Religion Billingham is home to several religious communities, the largest of which are the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.