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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's steel Angel of the North spreads its wings 54 metres, nearly three times its 20-metre height, and weighs 208 tonnes. It stands on the site of a former colliery beside the A1.
Q 02Which nickname for people from Sunderland is the Wearside counterpart of 'Geordie' on Tyneside?
Mackems
Mackems, also written Makems or Mak'ems, are otherwise known as Wearsiders, and the label is worn with pride on the red-and-white side of the Tyne–Wear divide.
Q 03Which North East town elected its football mascot, H'Angus the Monkey, as mayor in 2002?
Hartlepool
Hartlepool's new mayor Stuart Drummond had promised free bananas for schoolchildren, delivered them, and went on to win again in 2005 and 2009. The town's folklore says it 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 staged the first Great North Run in June 1981 with 12,000 runners on the course from Newcastle to South Shields. It has run every year since apart from 2020, usually in September.
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 06Which animal is Newcastle Brown Ale's Tyneside nickname, from the euphemism of seeing a man about one?
Dog
Dog comes from the old excuse 'seeing a man about a dog', and the ale it names was launched in 1927 by Colonel Jim Porter after three years of development.
Q 07What does 'bairn' mean in Geordie, one of the words that can be traced straight back to the Angles?
Child
Child is 'bairn' on Tyneside just as it is in Scots, and Geordie 'gan' for go likewise survives from the Angles, matching modern Dutch 'gaan'.
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, nine miles 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?
Q 21Which Northumberland mining town produced Jackie Milburn and England's 1966 World Cup winner Bobby Charlton?
Ashington
Ashington's Bobby Charlton was born to coal miner Bob Charlton and Cissie, née Milburn, whose cousin was Newcastle's 'Wor Jackie'. Charlton survived the Munich air disaster of 1958.
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 games before his Nottingham Forest triumphs; rival Don Revie was also Middlesbrough-born, and Bob Paisley came from Hetton-le-Hole in County Durham.
Q 23Which footballer reached number 2 in 1990 with a reworked 'Fog on the Tyne', recorded with folk-rockers Lindisfarne?
Cragside
Cragside's dams and lakes also drove a sawmill, a laundry, a hydraulic lift and even a hydroelectric rotisserie. Armstrong had invented the hydraulic crane and the Armstrong gun.
Q 14The 1936 Jarrow March of about 200 men to London followed the 1934 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 that crossed in 90 seconds, the Transporter carried up to 200 people or nine cars beneath its fixed steel span; it has been shut for repairs since 2019. Prince Arthur of Connaught opened it in October 1911.
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 unit, the first tilting bridge ever built, and cost £22 million when it opened to walkers and cyclists in September 2001.
Q 17Sunderland's Penshaw Monument, raised in 1844 for the Earl of Durham, is a roofless copy of which building in Athens?
Temple of Hephaestus
The Temple of Hephaestus was reworked as a Doric temple of eighteen columns with no roof or inner chamber, honouring John Lambton, author of the Durham Report on governing British North America.
Q 18Which prime minister, namesake of a bergamot tea, stands on the 1838 column at the heart of Newcastle's Grainger Town?
Earl Grey
Earl Grey's column celebrates the Great Reform Act of 1832, which he passed as prime minister to extend the vote and redraw constituencies. He held office from 1830 to 1834.
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 built for Rank Hovis to a late-1930s design, the Baltic Flour Mills worked in various capacities from 1950 to 1984 before the conversion.
Q 20Middlesbrough's only 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, earned him a gold disc in the autumn after his Italia 90 World Cup.
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 finished his Ecclesiastical History of the English People at Jarrow in about 731, and the cathedral that holds his shrine later doubled as Hogwarts in two Harry Potter films.
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 led an invading Scots army against the Earl of Surrey's English force near the village of Branxton, where the battle was actually fought.
Q 29Which Northumberland colliery, the North East's last deep coal mine, closed in January 2005?
Ellington
Ellington still employed around 50 pit ponies in 1983, one of the last large industrial users to do so, and most of its coal went to the neighbouring Lynemouth power station.
Q 30The Northumberland fishing village of Craster, a shore walk from Dunstanburgh Castle, is famous for smoking which fish?
Herring
Herring cured in Craster's smokehouse become the kippers known around the world, a business the village has run for many years.