County in England
County Durham
For centuries a bishop here ran his own army, courts and mint, and today the county still celebrates a worm-slaying knight and a gathering of miners' banners.
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Key information
- County
- County Durham
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 522,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- Durham Cathedral and Castle, the Prince Bishops, the Durham Miners' Gala, the Lambton Worm, High Force waterfall, the birthplace of passenger railways
- What locals are called
- Durham folk, or Durhamites
- Famous people
- Sir Bobby Robson, Rowan Atkinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lewis Carroll (associated with nearby Croft-on-Tees)
- Football clubs
- Darlington, Hartlepool United, Spennymoor Town, Bishop Auckland
About County Durham
The bishops who ruled like kings
For hundreds of years the Bishop of Durham was far more than a churchman. The Prince Bishops could raise armies, hold their own courts, mint coins and levy taxes, because the Crown wanted a strong hand guarding the wild border with Scotland. The county was a semi-independent territory, and its people were said to owe their loyalty to the bishop first. One custom survives from that age. When a new bishop first enters the county, he is traditionally presented with the Conyers Falchion, a medieval sword, at the crossing of the River Tees near Croft. It is a ceremony that goes back to the days when the bishop really was a ruler. The bishops' power base was Durham itself, a city packed onto a loop of the River Wear, with castle and cathedral guarding the neck of the peninsula. In the Middle Ages that was about as secure as a medieval stronghold could get.
The saint who walked here, and the cow who showed him where to stop
Durham Cathedral exists because of a wandering corpse. When Vikings threatened Lindisfarne, monks took the body of St Cuthbert and carried it around the north for years. Tradition says they finally settled on the rock above the Wear in 995, after a lost dun cow led them to the spot. A carving of a milkmaid and her cow still decorates the cathedral. The present building was begun in 1093 and is one of the great Norman structures of Europe. Its massive carved pillars and early rib vaulting were far ahead of their time. Together with the castle opposite, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Inside lie the shrine of St Cuthbert and the tomb of the Venerable Bede, the monk who wrote England's first great history. The cloisters will look familiar to Harry Potter fans, as they appeared in the early films. The university in the castle's shadow, founded in 1832, is often counted England's third oldest.
A worm, a well and a very long song
Every county has a monster. Durham has the Lambton Worm. The legend says young John Lambton skipped church to fish in the Wear and hooked a strange wormlike creature, which he tossed down a well. It grew enormous, coiled itself around a hill and terrorised the neighbourhood until John came home from the Crusades and killed it in the river, wearing armour studded with blades. He had promised to kill the first living thing he met afterwards, but his own father came out to greet him, and the vow went wrong. A curse on the family followed, according to the tale. The story is told in a Victorian music-hall song, "Whisht! Lads, Haad Yor Gobs", which people across the North East still know. A rival creature, the Sockburn Worm, is tied to the Conyers Falchion.
Coal, steel and the Big Meeting
Beneath much of the county lay one of Britain's great coalfields, and the pit villages that grew around it defined everyday life. At Consett, a steelworks employed thousands until it shut in 1980. The last deep coal mines closed in the early 1990s, with Easington Colliery among the final ones. The film Billy Elliot was shot in that part of the county. The tradition that kept the mining spirit alive is the Durham Miners' Gala, known locally as the Big Meeting. It has run since 1871. Each July, brass bands and lodge banners parade through Durham to the Racecourse, the Gala's main gathering place. Selected banners also go to a service at Durham Cathedral. It is among the largest labour-movement gatherings in Europe. The pit villages also gave the county its own dialect, Pitmatic, and its comfort food. Panackelty, a one-pan dish of meat, potato and vegetables, is the classic.
Where the railway age began
On 27 September 1825 George Stephenson's Locomotion No. 1 pulled the first passengers on a public steam railway, the Stockton and Darlington. Darlington was a founding town of the line. Locomotion No. 1 moved from Darlington to the Locomotion museum at Shildon in 2021, where the story of the engines built there is told. Darlington's former Head of Steam site reopened as Hopetown Darlington in July 2024. Beamish, near Stanley, gives a different view of the past. Its open-air museum has a re-created town, pit village and tramway, and ordinary Durham life of the 1820s to the 1940s runs on show. Barnard Castle has a surprise in the Bowes Museum, a French-style chateau full of art, built by John Bowes and his wife Joséphine. Its most famous piece is the Silver Swan, an 18th-century automaton that preens and catches a silver fish.
Waterfalls, wild flowers and a bit of sport
The western side of the county is moorland and dales, part of the North Pennines. Teesdale holds High Force, one of England's biggest waterfalls, where the Tees drops over a hard black ledge of rock. Upstream, the rare "sugar limestone" supports Arctic-Alpine plants such as spring gentian that survive nowhere else in England in such numbers. On the coast, Seaham is known for sea glass, polished smooth by the tides from old glassworks waste. Lord Byron married Annabella Milbanke at Seaham in 1815. Sport is taken seriously. Bishop Auckland won the FA Amateur Cup a record ten times. Sir Bobby Robson, born in Sacriston, became England manager. Durham County Cricket Club at Chester-le-Street joined the first-class game in 1992 and went on to win the County Championship in 2008, 2009 and 2013. For food, Durham city also has a mustard tradition: in the early 1700s Mrs Clements of Durham began grinding mustard seed into fine flour, and Durham mustard became famous.