Wolsingham, Durham
Historical Description
Wolsingham, a small town and a parish in Durham. The town stands on the river Wear, which is here crossed by a fine iron bridge built in 1893, 10 miles NW of Bishop Auckland, is a seat of petty sessions and county courts, carries on the manufacture of woollen cloth, and does mucli business in connection with neighbouring coal, iron, lead, and limestone works. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Darlington, a station on the N.E.R., a police station, a town-hall, a mechanics' institute, a library, a church rebuilt in 1848, Roman Catholic, Particular Baptist, Wesleyan, and Primitive Methodist chapels, an endowed grammar school, and eight annual fairs. There is a large steel work outside the town. Acreage of the civil parish, 24,378; population, 7533; of the ecclesiastical, 2600. There is a parish council consisting of eleven members. The parish includes Towlaw, Thornley, and part of Frosterley. The manor belongs to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. A moated seat of the bishops was in Wascrow Park. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Durham; net value, £689 with residence Patron, the Bishop of Chester.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | County Durham | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Wolsingham St. Matthew | |
| Poor Law union | Weardale | |
| Ward | Darlington |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Wolsingham from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Wolsingham (St. Matthew))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for County Durham is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Wolsingham are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following newspapers covering county Durham online: