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Wylam is a small parish in the Tyne valley bordering Tyne and Wear. It rises from the banks of the River Tyne to moderately high land near the A69 Newcastle to Carlisle road. Although it may be small Wylam has two river crossings and a wealth of post-medieval remains of importance not just to the parish – but the world.

Although the Tyne valley was probably attractive land for early prehistoric hunter-gatherers and settlers no traces have yet been discovered here. Similarly, no Iron Age settlement is known here, but a nearby hillfort in Horsley Wood would have overlooked part of the parish.

Wylam lies south of Hadrian’s Wall but no Roman remains have been found in the parish. Likewise, no early medieval presence is known, despite the numerous Anglo-Saxon sites along the Tyne valley at Ovingham, Bywell and within Tyne and Wear at Newburn.

Later, in the medieval period, Wylam was an estate of Tynemouth Priory (Tyne and Wear). The priory owned land and the services of tenants around the area through monastic granges. Wylam Hall was the base of this small estate and, like Tynemouth Priory, needed fortification against Scottish raiders.

Wylam seems to have been a focus for innovation in the post-medieval period. There used to be many remains associated with the coal industry, including many collieries, fire clay works and waggonways. Such operations needed many workers and included the family of the great engineer George Stephenson who lived in only one room of the house now known as George Stephenson’s Cottage. His Birthplace is his cottage that can be found on the north bank of the Tyne three quarters of a mile (1.2 km) east of the village centre. It is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.

Wylam has further connections with the early rail pioneers. The steam locomotive engineer Timothy Hackworth, who worked with Stephenson, was also born here. William Hedley who was born in the nearby village of Newburn attended the village school. He later went on to design and manufacture Puffing Billy in 1813, two years before George Stephenson produced his first locomotive Blücher.

As part of the Industrial Revolution others made huge sums of money on Tyneside, including Charles Parson, inventor of the turbine, who lived at Holeyn Hall. Another inventor, who lived at Wylam Hall, was William Hedley who experimented with steam engines and built Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly at Wylam Forge with Timothy Hackworth and John Foster. Transport links were developed from the purely industrial enterprises of waggonways through the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. Wylam station is one of the oldest stations in the world still in passenger use. Two bridges cross the River Tyne at Wylam: one a road bridge that started life as a combined road and rail bridge connecting the village with its collieries on the south bank; and the other, the West Wylam Railway Bridge a precursor of the famous Tyne Bridge in Newcastle. In modern times, the importance of river crossings so near to Newcastle resulted in the construction of a pillbox outside the village during World War II (1939-1945).

Wylam is now a small exclusive parish. It has lost the industry that for so long characterised it to the world. The parish is beyond urban Tyneside and has managed to regain some peace and quiet from an industrialised past.

The earliest reference to Wylam is in a record of 1158 that records that the settlement belonged to the Priory at Tynemouth. It is thought that Guy de Balliol, Lord of Bywell, gave Wylam to the Priory in 1085. The Priors of Tynemouth held lands in the village until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. The Blackett family have had a long association with the village. In 1685, John Blackett bought two farms at Wylam. These farms formed a modest estate and residence for the Blackett family until the third quarter of the twentieth century. The Blackett family also acquired the Lordship of the Manor of Wylam. The Lordship also included mineral rights within the township. This allowed the family to develop the colliery and further increase their prosperity.

An article in The Newcastle Courant of 17 January 1874 entitled "Our Colliery Villages" paints an unattractive image of the village - 'Wylam is the very worst colliery village that we have yet beheld …'. The colliery has an important place in the history of the development of the locomotive. It is thought that the Wylam waggonway was opened in 1748 and was therefore one of the earliest waggonways in the north of England. The waggonway linked the colliery to the staiths at Lemington from where the coal was taken down The River Tyne on flat bottomed boats called keels to be loaded on the large coal ships further down the river.

Wylam has approximately 800 households, with a population of 2,100.