Stan Laurel (real name Arthur Stanley Jefferson) was born in Ulverston, Lancs on 16 June 1890. This was his grandparents' home, however, (his grandfather being the irascible clock-winder Joe Metcalfe) where Stan remained only until October 1891, when he was taken to his parents' house, 66 Princes Street in Bishop Auckland; he was christened in St Peter's church. Nevertheless, he seems to have spent a good deal of time with his grandparents in his earliest years.
Stan's father, Arthur ('A.J.') Jefferson ran the Theatre Royal (later Eden Theatre) from 1889-86 and again from 1922-25. This was home to his touring melodrama companies who performed Arthur's plays - some of which are thought to have been used by Stan in his earliest films. 'A.J' acted in these productions himself. He had married Madge Metcalfe of Ulverston, a beautiful actress with a talent for stage design.
Stan lived at 8 Dockwray Square in North Shields from 1897-1901, where 'A.J.' ran the Theatre Royal (Prudhoe Street) as well as others in Blyth and Scotland. 'A.J.' was always pulling advertising stunts for his productions and was a great local favourite (Stan bore a remarkable facial resemblance to his father). A charitable man, he gave matinées for the poorhouse inmates, picking them up in buses and sending them home with packets of tea, sugar, biscuits and snuff. Meanwhile, the young Stan, according to his father, demanded that the attic in Dockwray Square be converted into a miniature theatre. Stan contrived to set the place alight on one occasion. It was quite probably the stunning views of the Tyne estuary here that gave him his 'lifelong passion' for the sea. He eventually retired to Ocean Drive in Santa Monica, with a fine ocean view.
Stan returned to Bishop Auckland in 1902, and was a boarder at King James Grammar School in the town, where he gave his first performances in Staff House opposite the school. He was a lax student and was sent to Gainford Academy until 1905. Stan recalled being always either at boarding school at this period, or living with his grandparents in Ulverston.

After the family moved to Glasgow, Stan toured the country with the pantomime Sleeping Beauty in 1907. For a pound a week, Stan stood motionless for the whole of the first act as a golliwog by the cradle of the baby, played by Wee Georgie Wood (q.v.). Later he worked with Will Murray's 'Casey's Court', and Fred Karno's 'Mumming Birds' . In 1910, he set sail for America with the Karno company. Stan Laurel always thought of himself as belonging to the English variety tradition and kept up a correspondence with artistes in England, notably Wee Georgie Wood (q.v.). He also saw to it that the references in his films were comprehensible to an English audience. Stan's accent of course is clearly northern.

In 1932 Stan and his great partner Oliver Hardy came to England came to England and were mobbed everywhere they went. In Newcastle Stan was feted almost to exhaustion. A second tour was arranged in 1947 and another in 1952, when Laurel and Hardy performed at the Newcastle Empire on 17 March and the Sunderland Empire on 24 March. They were in Newcastle again on 23 November 1953 and at the Sunderland Empire on 22 February 1954. Two 16mm films exist of the Laurel and Hardy UK tours, where the famous pair are shown at Tynemouth and elsewhere. Stan would visit his English relatives on these tours. His father 'A.J.' lived from 1940 with Stan's only sister, Olga Beatrice and husband Bill Woods at the Plough in Barkston near Grantham, Lincs. His nephew Huntley Jefferson Woods (b. 1923), Olga's son, still lives in Blyth (2004). In that year he sold a collection of Laurel memorabilia at Anderson and Garland in Newcastle for £20,000.
There is a plaque and statue (by Bob Olley of South Shields) in Dockwray Square.
Peter Sellars took a poster-sized autographed photo of his hero, Stan Laurel wherever he travelled. He modelled the voice of Chance, the gardener in Being There on that of Laurel.