To the Remote Reaches of Weardale

Industrial Heritage of One of Durham's Most Beautiful Valleys

Jul 18, 2008 Anthony Toole

The scenery of Upper Weardale is characterised by a bleak beauty scattered with the relics of what was once the largest lead mining industry in the world.

The River Wear, one of the three great water courses of North-east England, flows from its source in the wildest moorlands of the Pennines to meet the North Sea at Sunderland. The bleakness of its upper reaches, its geology and industrial history provided a lifetime’s material to the poet W H Auden. A visitor to this little-known, but very beautiful valley can share much of what inspired some of Auden’s greatest poetry.

The Weardale Railway

Weardale Railway was in use from the 1850s until 1992. Originally, it carried minerals and passengers between Bishop Auckland and Wearhead, though latterly, it served a now redundant cement works at Eastgate. Steam and diesel trains run throughout the year, between Wolsingham and Stanhope, operated by volunteers from the Weardale Railway Trust. Further extensions of the service, along the remaining track from Bishop Auckland to Eastgate are planned for the future. The 5-mile journey is leisurely and runs from rural, wooded country to where the wilder scenery of the Pennine moors begins to assert itself.

The Harehope Quarry Project

An eco-friendly educational project has been set up half-a-mile from Frosterley, between Wolsingham and Stanhope. It contains a trail designed to give an insight into geological time scales, and a hide that allows one to watch the birds that visit the quarry pond. A track around the quarry rim crosses, at its western end, a bridge over Bollihope Burn, a small river that runs into a miniature limestone gorge. In the stream bed, boulders of Frosterley marble are well exposed. This is, in fact, a highly decorative, fossil-bearing limestone, used in many churches in the county, including Durham Cathedral.

Stanhope

The Dales Centre in Stanhope comprises a Tourist Information Centre, café and shops that sell samples of mineral ores, paintings and craft works. Adjacent to this is St Thomas’s Church, at the graveyard wall of which stands a fossil tree. This was brought here from a sandstone quarry at Edmundbyers, ten miles to the north, and dates back to the carboniferous era of 320 million years ago.

The Weardale Museum, Ireshopeburn

The Weardale Museum adjoins High House Methodist Chapel, which has remained in continuous use since 1760. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, made thirteen visits here following his first in 1752. The museum is small, intimate and truly fascinating, and records the history of Methodism in the valley, as well as that of the mines and quarries, and documents the hard lives of the inhabitants of Weardale.

The Killhope Wheel

Almost at the wild western limit of Weardale is the North of England Lead Mining Museum, dominated by the huge presence of the Killhope water wheel, which was built in the 1870s. After lying derelict for decades, this former mine site was restored and opened in 1984. It offers a great family day out, which includes a trip into a drift mine and an opportunity to prospect for mineral ores on the ‘washing floor’. The cramped building that housed the miners can be seen, together with a wonderful collection of spar boxes, made by the more artistic miners from unwanted fragments of rocks and minerals. Visitors can also walk through the surrounding woods, where they might glimpse red squirrels.

The copyright of the article To the Remote Reaches of Weardale in U.K./Ireland Travel is owned by Anthony Toole. Permission to republish To the Remote Reaches of Weardale in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.