35 Facts About Northern England

Northern England, known as the North of England or simply the North, is the northern area of England.

Northern England is culturally and economically distinct from both the Midlands and the South of England.

Government and statistical purposes, Northern England is defined as the area covered by the three statistical regions of England – North East England, North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber.

Northern England is not a homogeneous unit, and some have entirely rejected the idea that the North exists as a coherent entity, claiming that considerable cultural differences across the area overwhelm any similarities.

Northern England is one of the most treeless areas in Europe, and to combat this the government plans to plant over 50 million trees in a new Northern Forest across the region.

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Northern England has a cool, wet oceanic climate with small areas of subpolar oceanic climate in the uplands.

The north-west of Northern England retains vestiges of a Celtic culture, and had its own Celtic language, Cumbric, spoken predominately in Cumbria until around the 12th century.

Parts of the north and east of England were subject to Danish control during the Viking era, but the northern part of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria remained under Anglo-Saxon control.

Under the Vikings, monasteries were largely wiped out, and the discovery of grave goods in Northern England churchyards suggests that Norse funeral rites replaced Christian ones for a time.

Northern England was a focal point for fighting during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Northern England had plentiful coal and water power while the poor agriculture in the uplands meant that labour in the area was cheap.

From further afield, Northern England saw immigration from European countries such as Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Scandinavia.

The Great Depression highlighted the weakness of Northern England's specialised economy: as world trade declined, demand for ships, steel, coal and textiles all fell.

Industrial concentration in Northern England made it a major target for Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War.

Growth, employment and household income have lagged behind the South, and the five most deprived districts in England are all in Northern England, as are ten of the twelve most declining major towns in the UK.

Decline of coal mining and manufacturing in Northern England has led to comparisons with the Rust Belt in the United States.

Between 2000 and 2008, the majority of new jobs created in Northern England were for the government and its suppliers and contractors.

All three Northern regions have public sector employment above the national average, and North East has the highest level in England with 20.

The rough Pennine terrain means that most of Northern England is unsuited for growing crops; like Scotland, Northern farming was traditionally dominated by oats, which grow better than wheat in poor soil.

The number of grouse moors in Northern England is a major threat to natural predators, which are often killed by gamekeepers to protect grouse, and as a result, the Cumbria Wildlife Trust describes the North's moors as a "black hole" for the endangered hen harrier.

Northern England has a strong export-based economy, with trade more balanced than the UK average, and the North East is the only region of England to regularly export more than it imports.

Northern England was the birthplace of the modern cooperative movement, and the Manchester-based Co-operative Group has the highest revenue of any firm in the North West.

In 2015, Northern England received around a quarter of all domestic tourism within the UK, with 28.

Household internet access in Northern England is at or above the UK average, but speeds and broadband penetration vary greatly.

Traits stereotypically associated with Northern England are straight-talking, grit and warmheartedness, as compared to the supposedly effete Southerners.

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Northern England women are still stereotyped as strong-willed and independent, or affectionately as battle-axes.

North of Northern England is often stereotypically represented through the clothing worn by working-class men and women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Traditional folk music in Northern England is a combination of styles of England and Scotland – what is called the Anglo-Scottish border ballad was once prevalent as far south as Lancashire.

The high-water mark of rugby union in Northern England was the 1979 New Zealand tour during which the English Northern Division was the only team to defeat the All Blacks.

Marxism and, more generally, socialism were shaped by reports into the lives of the Northern working class, from Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England to George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier.

Today, Northern England is generally described as a stronghold of the Labour Party – although the Conservatives hold some rural seats, they traditionally held almost no urban seats and as of the 2021 local elections there are no Conservative councillors on Liverpool City Council, Manchester City Council or Newcastle City Council, and only one on Sheffield City Council.

Northern England'storically the region was a heartland for the Liberals, and between the 1980s and the 2010s their successors in the Liberal Democrats benefited from Conservative unpopularity by positioning themselves as the centrist alternative to Labour in the North.

At the 2016 EU membership referendum, all three Northern England regions voted to leave, as did all English regions outside London.

Northern England is a centre of freight transport and handles around one third of all British cargo.

Manchester Airport serves as the main international hub for Northern England and is the busiest airport anywhere in the UK outside London, handling 27.