Coatham

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coatham is a place in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. Coatham is the town where Jane Gardam, twice winner of the Whitbread Prize, was brought up and where some of her novels are set.

Coatham began as a market village in the 1300s to the smaller adjacent fishing port of Redcar but as their populations grew from the 1850s, the dividing space narrowed. Though Coatham is now only a mile-wide district in the town of Redcar, the need for definition was strong enough to warrant the western boundary being marked by a fence which ran the length of West Dyke Road and West Terrace. Coatham comprises the remaining coastal land north of the railway line from West Dyke Road to Warrenby in the west.

The majority of modern Coatham is Victorian housing, most notably at its northern tip by the Coatham Hotel built in 1860. A small boating lake, leisure centre, arcade complex and caravan park now occupies the remainder of Coatham's coast. To the east, the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust's Coatham Marsh Nature Reserve hosts 134 acres of ancient Marsh and grassland.

Since the mid-1990s political debate has been generated amongst Coatham's five thousand residents as to the future of the last undeveloped section of Coatham's coastal land known as Coatham Common/Coatham Enclosure - for the last 25 years used as a golf course and local recreation area. Residents are objecting at losing open space to the council's proposed housing and leisure development planned to revive the tourist industry. A decision is expected in 2006.

[edit] External links

• Coatham Marsh Wildlife Images
• A Redcar History site
• Communigate - Coatham to Warrenby

• National Statistics - Coatham Ward 2001
• Wildlife Trust Tees Valley
• Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council - Coatham Enclosure

Locations in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire.

Towns: Brotton | Dormanstown | Eston | Grangetown | Guisborough | Loftus | Redcar (Lakes Estate, Redcar East)| Saltburn-by-the-Sea | Skelton-in-Cleveland | South Bank | Teesville Villages: Boosbeck | Boulby | Carlin How | Charltons | Coatham | Dunsdale | Easington | Handale | Kilton | Kilton Thorpe | Kirkleatham | Lazenby | Lingdale | Liverton | Margrove Park | Marske-by-the-Sea | Moorsholm | New Marske | Newton under Roseberry | North Skelton | Ormesby | Scaling | Skinningrove | Stanghow | Upleatham | Warrenby | Westfield | Wilton | Yearby Parish & Town Councils: Guisborough | Lockwood | Loftus | Saltburn, Marske and New Marske | Skelton and Brotton

See also: Cleveland, Langbaurgh (wapentake), Langbaurgh East, Teesside, Tees Valley