Delighted to be asked by @uklandestates to delve into their archive for their 30th anniversary. They now have a portfolio of 28 estates across the region, but the Team Valley was not just their first, it’s actually the oldest industrial estate in Europe

Team Valley was born because the North East didn’t rebound from worldwide recession like the South did. Although firms like Armstrongs dabbled with car-manufacture in the early 20s, the NE stuck all its eggs in the heavy industry basket: coal, ships and guns.

But demand for coal and armaments had cratered. In 1936, men even marched from Jarrow to London to highlight their desperation at mass unemployment. In Jarrow, it reached 80 per cent. In nearby Gateshead it was 57 per cent.

Such was the state of the region’s economy that in 1934 the National Government decided to site Europe’s first industrial estate in the Team Valley to create “facilities required by industrialists engaged in starting fresh enterprises” (of the type that were booming in the South)

The excellent @Englands_NE tells us that the River Team begins as a collection of streams near Tanfield in NW Durham – a name which originally meant ‘Team Field’. Team is an ancient name, meaning ‘dark river’ with the same root as the name of the Thames.