About Yarm.

Yarm — its name from the Old English for "the place of the fish pools" — was already established enough to be recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Sitting at the highest navigable point on the River Tees, it grew into a busy inland port and trading town.

In 1207 King John granted Yarm a charter to hold a market, and trade has shaped the town ever since. Its unusually wide High Street — voted Britain's best high street by BBC Breakfast in 2007 — was built broad to host those markets, and is still lined with Georgian buildings, independent shops and the cobbled parking that gives it its character.

The arrival of the railway brought the town's most dramatic landmark: the viaduct, built between 1849 and 1851 from more than seven million bricks, carrying the line across the valley on 43 arches. Today Yarm keeps its market-town traditions alive with the annual Yarm Fair each October, descended from centuries of cheese and livestock trading.