Ward: Thorntree

About Ward: Thorntree

Thorntree is a housing estate in east Middlesbrough within the borough of Middlesbrough and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. It is so called because it was built on land which was Thorntree Farm. It has a public park called Thorntree Park. The main roads of the estate are College Road and The Greenway.

This housing estate was built in the late 1940s after people started to move away from the terrace housing of Middlesbrough town centre and North Ormesby.

Thorntree has a population of 5,000 and was identified as the 3rd most deprived (out of 8,414) housing ward in England in 2000. However, since the Index of Multiple Deprivation has begun to measure smaller output areas with a mean population of 1500 the three areas of Thorntree now rank 192nd, 205th and 378th most deprived (out of 34,412) in England respectively.

The estate recently featured in the Channel 4, Reality TV show, Secret Millionaire. Millionaire Paul Williams and his 20-year-old son Ben lived undercover on Thorntree for 10 days. At the end of the show, he gave £10,000 to local hairdresser Gina Lawrence to help her to train trainee hairdressers. He also gave a further £10,000 to the The Christian Centre (formerly Thorntree Community Church) Lunch Club, which they used to buy a minibus and fund the club.

Much of Thorntree stands on what used to be a farmland. In all, 138 acres (0.56 km2) of Thorntree Farm and 68 acres (280,000 m2) of Low Bottoms Farm were purchased as land on which to site the estate.

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