📍Stephenson's Birthplace, Wylam NE41 8BP, UK
1781 – 1789“I was born in June 1781 in this stone cottage at Wylam, on the north bank of the River Tyne west of Newcastle. It was shared by four families, and ours had a single room on the ground floor: my father Robert, known to everyone as Old Bob, my mother Mabel, and us children, all living, cooking and sleeping in that one space. My father was the fireman who stoked the pumping engine at Wylam Colliery, and he earned very little, but he was a kind man who told us stories and loved birds and animals. Right past our front door ran the Wylam wagonway, a wooden track along which horses pulled chaldron wagons of coal from the colliery down to the boats on the Tyne. From the time I could walk, I was told to keep my younger brothers and sisters out of the way of the wagons, and I watched those horses and loads go by every day. When I was eight, we moved to Dewley Burn, where I herded cows and made model engines out of clay with my friends, and before long I followed my father to work at the pits. I could not read or write until I was eighteen, when I paid for lessons at night school out of my wages. But I understood machines, and I learned to mend and improve the colliery engines. That understanding of coal, engines and wagonways grew into the steam locomotive. I built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway and, with my son Robert, the Rocket. My birthplace now belongs to the National Trust, and the old wagonway past our door is a footpath and cycle track.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
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