New Shildon and Shildon (GB)
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New Shildon Post Office was a County Sub-Office in its own right i.e. not a Sub-Office of any postal town. It arose due to the expansion of Shildon as Wagon & Coach works for the newly found Railway systems of the Victorian era.
Shildon Post Office was a Sub-Office of New Shildon originally. The town is now just known as Shildon as it expanded the two areas north and south merged into each other.
New Shildon Postmarks are less common than Shildon.
Shildon is a town and civil parish in County Durham, in England. The name Shildon comes from the Old English word sceld, This translates as 'shelf shaped hill' or 'shield/refuge'. Another possibility is the Old English word syclfe meaning 'shelf' and the suffix duri meaning 'hill'. This refers to the town's location on a limestone escarpment.
At the dawn of the 19th century Shildon was a few houses on a crossroad. The Industrial Revolution and the coming of the railways saw the town grow. In 1801 the population was recorded at being 100 people. Their occupations were noted as being in agriculture, coal mining and the growing textiles industry.
The volume of coal being produced by coal mining outstripped the capacity of the traditional method of transporting coal, on horse-drawn wagon ways. Steam power was introduced through the use of static steam engines. These were, in turn, were superseded by steam locomotives. Coal would be pulled by static engines over Brusselton Incline into Shildon where the wagons would be attached to a locomotive.
The population grew with this industrial expansion, the population rising from 115 in 1821, to 2,631 in 1841 up to 11,759 by the end of the century.
The railway works closed on 29 June 1984, with the loss of 1,750 jobs.
National Railway museum: Locomotion, incorporating the existing Timothy Hackworth Museum and part of the National Railway Museum in York, was opened on Friday 22 October 2004. The museum was opened by the Prime Minister of the time Tony Blair.
