Middlesbrough F.C.

Middlesbrough. I’ll be honest. I’ve delayed doing this badge because it just looked a bit too straightforward. A lion. It would come from the crest of some local lord – and that would be it.

Aha – not quite. Well, sort of. But that’s only one tiny bit of it.

This lion tells a tale that stretches from before the Norman invasion right up to the Industrial Revolution and makes it instantly one of my favourite badges – so, without further ado, let’s do Middlesbrough FC the honour, and #GetTheBadgeIn.

Let’s begin, as we often do, with the name – as that one predates most of what follows. Middle Borough. As the name suggests, it alludes to it being in the middle of two points. In this case, halfway between the two monastic sites at Whitby and Durham – the small village became home to a priory, presumably offering an overnight stay to monks making the trek between the two sites. 800 years after its founding, in 1801, it had reached the staggering population of just 25 people.

Nobody would have ever heard of it for most of English history.

However, that isn’t to say it was not involved in the wider story arc of England – and its northerly Scottish neighbours. Because it very much was – and this leads us to the origin of that lion.

It is, in heraldry speak, a lion rampant (which simply means it is stood up). Taken, in this instance, from the family crest of the Brus family.

Originally French (Norman), they came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. Following William’s defeat of Harold Godwinson, King of the Saxons, with the famous arrow in the eye, he set about parcelling up England and giving bits of it to his Norman mates. The Brus (or Brix, in French) were one of them.

New English real estate in the North opened up a few years after the Battle of Hastings as William set about solving the ‘problem’ of Northern England being so difficult to manage – by butchering them all. This genocide became known as the Harrying of the North – all the Saxons (or often Vikings, that far north) were removed from their lands and the Norman nobles came in. The Brus were given the lands in and around modern-day Middlesbrough and a red lion rampant was the family crest – and therefore became associated with the region.

If Brus sounds a touch familiar, it is because the family didn’t stop in the North East of England but moved up into Scotland. Their most famous son became Robert the Bruce, the King of Scotland who famously led the Scots to victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn and secured Scotland’s independence, cementing his place as one of the most important figures in British history. His state at Stirling today looks down on that battlefield - and you can see his coat of arms on the statue base.

So, when people say ‘isn’t the Middlesbrough badge just the Scottish badge? … well, it sort of is… although the Scottish badge came first – it was already the Scottish crown’s symbol before the Bruce family took control – and the Bruce family adopted the symbol as their own – which in turn meant it also applied to its lands in the North East.

Which is why – nearly a millennia later – Middlesbrough FC fly the Brus family crest today every time they take the field.

However, we haven’t even really got to the main part of the story yet – Middlesbrough, as it currently stands, only exists because of coal. And rail.

Specifically, a very famous railway.

Back in 1801, Middlesbrough was little more than a farmstead and a handful of cottages. Twenty-five people. That was it. Not twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five.

The problem – or opportunity, depending on your perspective – was that County Durham was sitting on vast coal reserves. Coal was becoming the black gold of the Industrial Revolution and somebody needed to get it from the mines to the ships that would carry it around Britain and beyond.

Enter a Quaker businessman named Joseph Pease.

Pease was a banker, mine owner and, crucially, one of the driving forces behind the Stockton and Darlington Railway – the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives. In 1828, he sailed up the River Tees looking for somewhere to build new coal-loading facilities connected to the railway. What he found was Middlesbrough.

Or rather, the place that would become Middlesbrough.

Pease and a group of fellow investors bought more than 500 acres of land and set about creating an entirely new settlement. Coal staithes were built on the riverbank, houses were constructed for workers, and a branch line linked the new port directly to the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

It wasn't a medieval market town that slowly grew over centuries. It wasn't a Roman settlement. It wasn't an ancient port.

It was a Victorian business venture.

And it worked.

Spectacularly.

Within a few years the tiny village was handling so much traffic that new docks had to be built. The railway brought coal to the river. The river carried coal to the world. Money flowed back the other way.

The transformation was astonishing. Middlesbrough's population exploded from around 40 people in 1829 to over 7,000 by 1851.

It became known as the "Infant Hercules" because it seemed to have sprung from nowhere and immediately started throwing its weight around.

And if all this railway talk sounds familiar, that's because Middlesbrough's neighbours at Darlington F.C. still proudly display a steam locomotive on their badge today (and a quaker hat - in honour of the local quakers, like Pease, who funded the whole thing) - it is Locomotion No. 1, the famous steam locomotive designed by George Stephenson and built by Robert Stephenson which first ran the Darlington-Stockton railway.

So important was Joseph Pease to the story that Middlesbrough erected a statue in his honour. It still stands today, watching over the town that he quite literally helped build from scratch.

But Middlesbrough's growth was only just beginning.

Because if coal and rail created the town, iron turned it into a giant.

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In 1841, Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan established ironworks on Teesside. Then, in 1850, rich seams of ironstone were discovered in the nearby Eston Hills. Suddenly Middlesbrough had everything it needed: coal for fuel, ironstone for smelting, a railway network to move materials and a port to export the finished products.

The result was extraordinary.

Pig iron production surged. Blast furnaces multiplied. Smoke stacks dominated the skyline. By the 1870s Middlesbrough was producing roughly a third of Britain's pig iron output and had earned itself a new nickname: Ironopolis.

The Iron-Smelling Centre of the World.

Well... technically "Iron-Smelting". Although I suspect "Iron-Smelling" was also accurate if the wind was blowing in your direction.

This was no longer the sleepy priory village that had spent centuries sitting quietly between Whitby and Durham. This was one of the beating industrial hearts of the British Empire.

The iron and steel of Middlesbrough helped build cities across the globe.

By 1900, the population had reached around 90,000 people. The town had received its Royal Charter, gained its own Member of Parliament and become one of the most important industrial centres in Britain.

Yet Middlesbrough's connection with the wider world didn't begin with iron, steel or even railways.

Because before Teesside was exporting pig iron, it was exporting explorers.

Just a few miles away, in the village of Great Ayton, a young farmer's son named James Cook was growing up. Before he became Captain Cook, before Australia, before New Zealand, before Hawaii, Cook spent his formative years working on Whitby collier ships carrying coal from the North East down to London.

These weren't glamorous vessels. They were workhorses. Floating coal wagons. But they were sturdy, reliable and capable of handling the rough waters of the North Sea. More importantly, they taught Cook navigation, seamanship and chart-making.

In many ways, the skills that allowed him to map huge parts of the Pacific Ocean were learned while hauling coal from the same coastline that helped create Middlesbrough itself.

Without coal, there is probably no Captain Cook.

Cook became one of the most important explorers in human history, charting vast stretches of the Pacific and helping to transform European understanding of the world. His connection to the area remains so strong that the star, or estoile, associated with him was later incorporated into Middlesbrough's coat of arms.

Not bad for a lad who started out sailing on coal boats.

So there we have it - so far - Rails. Bridges. Ships. Factories. Machinery. Explorers.

And their club has proudly represented its heritage. In footballing terms, Middlesbrough have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions, but their greatest achievements include winning the Football League Cup in 2004, reaching the final of the UEFA Cup Final two years later, and twice finishing as runners-up in the old First Division before the Premier League era. They've also produced a remarkable number of England internationals and, despite never winning the league title, remain one of the most successful clubs never to have been crowned champions of England.

They've had some great players over the years: including Juninho Paulista, Mark Viduka, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Gaizka Mendieta, Stewart Downing and club captain Gareth Southgate, who helped deliver the most successful era in Middlesbrough's history. It is quite the story.

Much of that story was told at Ayresome Park.

Opened in 1903, Ayresome became one of English football's great traditional grounds. It hosted matches during the 1966 World Cup and witnessed some of the finest moments in the club's history. Generations of Middlesbrough supporters passed through its turnstiles before the club finally said goodbye in 1995.

That year Middlesbrough moved to the Riverside Stadium.

Fittingly, the club moved back towards the river that had created the town in the first place.

The Riverside was one of the first new generation stadiums built following the Taylor Report and represented a new chapter for both club and town. Yet Middlesbrough ensured that part of Ayresome Park came with them. The famous Ayresome Gates were relocated to the Riverside and still stand there today, linking the club's past to its present.

Which brings us back to the badge.

Because while the lion reminds us of Norman knights, medieval lordships and the family of Robert the Bruce, the very existence of Middlesbrough Football Club owes far more to Joseph Pease, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the coalfields of Durham and the furnaces of Ironopolis.

The town itself tells the story of how modern Britain was built. Quite the team.