North East England Trivia
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50 free North East England trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The North East packs more character into a small corner of England than almost anywhere else. Tyneside, Wearside, Teesside and the wide Northumberland countryside each have their own accent, their own football loyalties and their own stories, from Roman frontier forts to the pits and shipyards that built the modern world. These 50 questions range across the whole region: Geordie dialect, the landmarks along the Tyne and the Wear, the engineers and inventors who worked here, the saints and kings of old Northumbria, the derby rivalries, the dishes locals swear by, and the actors, singers and scientists the region sent out into the world. It suits a pub quiz in Jesmond, a family night in Durham, a Teesside works social, or anyone who wants to test how well they really know the land between the Tees and the Tweed.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sculptor modelled the 20-metre Angel of the North at Gateshead on his own body?
Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley angled the Angel's 54-metre wings about 3.5 degrees forward to give what he called 'a sense of embrace', and it stands on the mound of a former colliery beside the A1.
Q 02Which nickname for people from Sunderland is the Wearside counterpart of 'Geordie' on Tyneside?
Mackems
Mackems is thought to come from 'mak 'em and tak 'em', a saying about Wearside's shipbuilders, who made the vessels that others took away, with 'make' and 'take' said the Sunderland way.
Q 03Which North East town elected its football mascot, H'Angus the Monkey, as mayor in 2002?
Hartlepool
Hartlepool's Stuart Drummond, the man in the monkey suit, pledged free bananas for schoolchildren, then turned serious politician and won again in 2005 and 2009. Town legend says locals once hanged a shipwrecked monkey as a French spy.
Q 04Which Olympic 10,000 m bronze medallist devised the Great North Run, the world's largest half marathon?
Brendan Foster
Brendan Foster got the idea in New Zealand, after running in Auckland's mass-participation Round the Bays race; 12,000 runners turned out for his first Great North Run, in June 1981.
Q 05Middlesbrough's parmo covers a breaded chicken cutlet with cheddar and which white sauce?
Béchamel
Béchamel replaced the tomato sauce of the dish's ancestor, the escalope Parmesan, itself descended from Italian melanzane alla parmigiana. Teessiders also call it Teesside Parmesan.
Q 06By what nickname is Newcastle Brown Ale known on Tyneside?
Dog
Dog is said to come from an old excuse: men bound for the pub would tell their families they were off to 'see a man about a dog'. The ale itself dates from 1927.
Q 07What does the word 'bairn' mean in Geordie, as it also does in Scots?
Child
Child was 'bearn' in Old English across the country; standard English let the word go, while Tyneside and Scotland kept it as 'bairn'.
Q 08Which nation knocked Italy out of the 1966 World Cup with a 1–0 win at Middlesbrough's Ayresome Park?
North Korea
North Korea's win over one of football's great powers sent the Koreans into the quarter-finals. Ayresome Park also hosted the Soviet Union and Chile during that group stage.
Q 09Which engineer gatecrashed the 1897 Spithead naval review with Turbinia, then the fastest ship in the world?
Charles Parsons
Charles Parsons had built Turbinia in 1894 as the first steam-turbine vessel, and after Spithead turbines became standard for the next generation of steamships. The boat is now displayed in Newcastle.
Q 10Which actor played gangster Jack Carter in Get Carter, the 1971 thriller filmed on Tyneside?
Michael Caine
Michael Caine's Carter throws businessman Cliff Brumby to his death from Gateshead's brutalist Trinity Square car park, one of the first locations that caught director Mike Hodges's eye.
Q 11Which Northumberland village, on the Tyne west of Newcastle, was railway pioneer George Stephenson's birthplace?
Wylam
Wylam was a colliery village, and Stephenson's father Robert stoked its pumping engine for a wage that left nothing for the boy's schooling. The 'Father of Railways' was born there in 1781.
Q 12Which Sunderland-born inventor demonstrated a working electric light bulb to 700 people in Newcastle in 1879?
Joseph Swan
Joseph Swan's lecture at the Literary and Philosophical Society came as Edison raced to a rival lamp; the two later pooled their British business as Ediswan, selling Swan's cellulose-filament bulbs.
Q 13Which Northumberland house of arms maker William Armstrong was the first anywhere lit by hydroelectric power?
Cragside
Q 21Which Northumberland mining town produced Jackie Milburn and England's 1966 World Cup winner Bobby Charlton?
Ashington
Ashington's Bobby Charlton was the son of coal miner Bob and Cissie, née Milburn, whose cousin was Newcastle's 'Wor Jackie'; in 1958 teammate Harry Gregg pulled him from the wreck of the Munich air disaster.
Q 22Which Middlesbrough-born striker, a prolific scorer for Boro and Sunderland, later won two European Cups as a manager?
Brian Clough
Brian Clough scored 251 goals in 274 league games before a collision with Bury's goalkeeper on Boxing Day 1962 wrecked his knee at 27, all but ending his playing days and turning him to management.
Q 23Which footballer reached number 2 in 1990 with a reworked 'Fog on the Tyne', recorded with folk-rockers Lindisfarne?
Cragside owes its power to a fishing trip: Armstrong hit on water power as a young man while fishing the Dee in Dentdale, then dammed lakes above the house to work its lights, lift and kitchen spit.
Q 14The 1936 Jarrow March of about 200 men to London followed the closure of which local employer?
Palmer's shipyard
Palmer's shipyard had been the town's main employer, and the marchers' petition was received by the Commons but never debated, so the Crusade produced few immediate results.
Q 15Middlesbrough's 1911 bridge over the Tees, the world's longest surviving of its type, carried vehicles across how?
On a suspended gondola
On a suspended gondola, because Parliament ruled the new crossing must not get in the way of shipping on the Tees; the Transporter's cradle hangs from a high fixed span and crosses in about 90 seconds.
Q 16How does the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, nicknamed the Blinking Eye, let boats pass beneath it on the Tyne?
It tilts on its pivots
It tilts on its pivots as one rigid piece, the first tilting bridge in the world, and it was lifted into place in a single piece by Asian Hercules II, one of the world's largest floating cranes.
Q 17Sunderland's Penshaw Monument, built for the Earl of Durham, is a roofless copy of which building in Athens?
Temple of Hephaestus
The Temple of Hephaestus copy hides a spiral staircase inside one column; it was shut after a 15-year-old fell to his death from the top in 1926, and the National Trust reopened it for guided climbs in 2011.
Q 18Which prime minister, who passed the Great Reform Act, stands on the 1838 column at the heart of Newcastle's Grainger Town?
Earl Grey
Earl Grey's column was put up in thanks for the 1832 Act, which redrew constituencies and widened the vote, and the bergamot-scented tea blend is thought to carry his name too.
Q 19Gateshead's Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, opened in 2002 on the Tyne's south bank, occupies what former building?
A flour mill
A flour mill begun for Joseph Rank in the late 1930s, the Baltic had its building work halted by the war and only started milling in 1950; it had closed by the mid-1980s and reopened as a gallery in 2002.
Q 20Middlesbrough's first major trophy, won under Steve McClaren against Bolton in 2004, came in which competition?
League Cup
League Cup success was followed two years later by a UEFA Cup final, reached through two comebacks from 3–0 down on aggregate, which Boro lost 4–0 to Sevilla in Eindhoven.
Paul Gascoigne
Paul Gascoigne's 'Fog on the Tyne (Revisited)', credited to Gazza and Lindisfarne, came out in October 1990 at the height of the 'Gazzamania' set off by his tears in the Italia 90 semi-final.
Q 24By what name do locals know the Durham Miners' Gala, held on the second Saturday of each July?
The Big Meeting
The Big Meeting parades colliery banners, each with its own brass band, through the city to the old Racecourse for political speeches, a legacy of the Durham Coalfield's trade unionism.
Q 25Which Jarrow monk, called the 'Father of English History', is enshrined in Durham Cathedral along with St Cuthbert?
Bede
Bede lies in Durham because, tradition says, a relic-collecting priest named Alfred carried his bones off from Jarrow around 1020 and laid them beside St Cuthbert's, though some scholars doubt the tale.
Q 26Which London institution holds the Lindisfarne Gospels, the illuminated Latin book made on Holy Island around 715?
British Library
The British Library took the Gospels when it was split from the British Museum, which had held Robert Cotton's manuscript collection since the 18th century. Its shelfmark is still Cotton MS Nero D.IV.
Q 27Which seat of the Percy Dukes of Northumberland doubled as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films?
Alnwick Castle
Alnwick Castle's Hogwarts role, in the first two films, brought a surge of public interest to the Percy family's seat, first built after the Norman Conquest.
Q 28Which Scottish king died at Flodden in Northumberland in 1513, the last monarch from Great Britain killed in battle?
James IV
James IV invaded to honour Scotland's Auld Alliance with France while Henry VIII was campaigning there, and fell near the village of Branxton to an English army under the Earl of Surrey.
Q 29Which Northumberland colliery, the North East's last deep coal mine, closed in January 2005?
Ellington
Ellington shut after flooding hit the pit that month and UK Coal judged it no longer safe to work, leaving machinery worth £8 million under water in a mine that ran far out beneath the North Sea.
Q 30The Northumberland fishing village of Craster, a shore walk from Dunstanburgh Castle, is famous for smoking which fish?
Herring
Herring are split, soaked in brine and hung for hours over smouldering oak in the Robson family's Craster smokehouses, which are more than a century old, before they come out as kippers.