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Hartlepool is less than half an hour's drive from South Shields yet having worked there in the past I've never really had the time to explore its historic "headland". This was the older, original part of Hartlepool, where they "hung the monkey" having mistaken it for a Napoleonic spy!
The "headland" used to be a medieval walled town with two towers guarding the entrance to the port - something which I never knew.
During the First World War the first British soldiers to be killed in action died here after German ships shelled the Heugh Battery in an effort to lure the British fleet into a staged battle.
You can see the pattern of the long terraced streets, very much like South Shields, as they leaned down towards the port, ship yards, and the fish quay. The old Victorian red brick still very much remains although much post war development is evident (and looks out of place). The old Town Hall, now a library, is a magnificent building and the whole area smells of maritime history.
This statue immortalises Andy Capp, the cartoon character found in The Daily Mirror for many years. Andy Capp was created by Reg Smythe of Hartlepool.
"Andy Capp has been with us since 1957 and in that time he's become an outspoken icon for the British working class. Put simply, he's a flat-cap wearing layabout, chauvinistic, unemployable pub-dweller from Hartlepool who spends most of his days perched precariously on or between the local watering hole and his living room sofa at Number 37 Durham Street. Andy has a point of view on everyone and everything, it seems. And his wife Flo has had to put up with his philosophizing for nigh-on 50 years."
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@Richard: So is Berlusconi, and he's a "bit of a lad" too.
@Jules: Flo would have rather hung him (or Jeff Stelling) than the monkey!
@CElliottUK: Oh yes, you can catch his antics online here.
PENTAX K100D
1/2000 second
F/3.5
ISO 200
27 mm (35mm equiv.)