A Vision of Britain

Luke mentioned some interesting reading on the Vision of Britain web, which yields census data, travel logs, & more about Britain from about 1801 to more recent times.   From the Home page you can search for information around a town, eg

Tanfield UD Employment in 1921, which compares well with .....

..... Ashington UD Employment in 1921

A search for Blaydon (Bleadon) leads to the travel writing of George Head, obviously from the late 1830s:

Sixteen miles of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railroad are already completed; and carriages attendant upon the trains daily apply to the small village of Bleadon, on the south bank of the Tyne, four miles from Newcastle; from Bleadon passengers are conveyed by steam to Hexham. Those to whose lot it has previously fallen to travel this mountainous road, can appreciate the agreeable change between the former laborious journey up one steep hill and down the next, and a level plane; to form an adequate idea of the beautiful scenery on the way, the traveller must be at the pains of gliding through it himself.

Search for Newcastle to find several travel writings, eg from from the side-saddle trips of  Celia Fiennes approaching Newcastle from Carlisle in 1698:

As I drew nearer and nearer to NewCastle I met with and saw abundance of Little Carriages wth a yoke of oxen and a pair of horses together, wch is to Convey the Coales from ye pitts to ye Barges on the river. There is Little sort of Dung-potts. I suppose they hold not above 2 or three Chaudron. 

Daniel Defoe's trip of the 1720s passed through Durham & Newcastle:

From hence the road to Newcastle gives a view of the in-exhausted store of coals and coal pits, from whence not London only, but all the south part of England is continually supplied; and whereas when we are at London, and see the prodigious fleets of ships which come constantly in with coals for this encreasing city, we are apt to wonder whence they come, and that they do not bring the whole country away; so, on the contrary, when in this country we see the prodigious heaps, I might say mountains, of coals, which are dug up at every pit, and how many of those pits there are; we are filled with equal wonder to consider where the people should live that can consume them.

Try searching for your town on the Vision of Britain web