Material Responses to the Great Depression in Northeast England

Abstract

The Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s was a global economic crisis, yet to understand its impacts in material terms, it is necessary to recognize that they were situated within specific local and regional contexts. This article, drawing on the work of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Landscapes of the Great Depression in the North East project, explores the impacts and responses to the Great Depression in Northeast England through an exploration of the materiality of a series of different responses to the crisis, as well as wider consideration of its impact on the landscape. By moving beyond an individual site, and instead looking at a range of interventions at site and landscape scale it shows the potential of taking a more holistic and comparative approach to exploring the impact of the Great Depression and offers an approach that might be used to better understand economic crises in other situations and contexts.