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The parish church is a useful place to start a study of a small town
or village and is often the oldest building. In fact this church was almost
completely rebuilt in 1848 leaving only the lower part of the tower from
the original Norman church. The church is unusual in having had two names.
The original, and present, name is St. Mary and St. Stephen but it was
known as St. Matthew's from 1848 to 1896.
Most churches will have a brief history available to look at or buy
from the church. If not, any history of the town or county will certainly
include a church history and architectural description and trade directories
always did. It is also generally easy to find old photographs or sketches.
The National
Monuments Record [NMR] has many such images. The Pevsner 'Looking
at Buildings' website has an excellent model of the development
of a parish church.
Churches are also places where you can find information about the people
who used to live in a place, both those who were prominent and families
who were less well known but whose stories are none the less interesting.
 This
gravestone commemorates, in poetry, three children of John and Isabella
Mackintosh who were buried between 1815 and 1845. William was only ten
days old when he died, Robert died aged eleven years and their daughter
Isabella died aged twenty-three.
Learning opportunity
-
Research the story behind this family. Further gravestones,
or memorial plaques inside the church, may provide some answers.
Archive sources including parish registers and the census, in this
case initially the 1841 and 1851 census enumerators' sheets, should
give more information about this particular family and the wider
community.
- What can one family's story tell us about how people lived in
nineteenth century Wolsingham and the problems they faced, such as
child mortality? How did it reflect society as a whole at the start
of the Victorian period?
Extract from St. Mary and St. Stephen parish register recording the burial
of Robert Mackintosh
 
This tomb commemorates Charles Attwood of Holywood House, Wolsingham
and Tow Law who lived from 1791 to 1875. It tells you he founded an
iron works in Wolsingham and patented a new method of steelmaking, giving
you the name of one of the town's most influential men plus a clue to
its main industry.
Another search of the Images of England database shows that
the former Wolsingham Ironworks, now part of Weardale Steel (Wolsingham),
is also a listed building.
A visit to Durham
Record Office reveals the original Articles of Incorporation for
The Weardale Iron Company dated October 7th 1846.
Click on the image to see an enlargement with the signature of
Charles Attwood clearly visible.
The Ironworks were a major employer in Wolsingham from 1864 producing
steel from Weardale iron ore. When Charles Attwood died his nephew took
over the company and traded as John Rogerson & Co until 1930. Steel
castings were produced for use in both shipbuilding and munitions, industries
of major importance to the North East. The firm made a major contribution
to the war effort in both World Wars. Electric arc furnaces were installed
around 1950 but trade declined and the works closed in 1984. Manufacture
continued for a time on a smaller scale run by a workers cooperative
and steel is still produced on the site today.
 Clues
to smaller scale industrial activity can still be seen as shown by this
barn which has a gingang [the circular structure] attached. A gingang
was a building that housed a horse engine. The horse walked around and
turned a wheel to provide power that could be used in manufacturing,
mining or farming.
Learning opportunity
- Do you only find gingangs in Wolsingham? Search the Images of
England website to find out how many other gingangs have been listed
[Go to Advanced Search, type 'gin gang' in the Keyword search box,
click on exact]. Go to Printer friendly and print out a list.
- Make a graph to show which counties had them. Which part of
the country seems to have had the most? Why do you think this was?
- If you were looking at one of these buildings what features would
tell you its purpose? Draw a picture or make a model to show what
the interior may have looked like.
- Find out what horse engines were used for using the list descriptions
and thesaurus.
The 1879 Durham Post Office Directory lists people in Victorian Wolsingham
and gives their occupations. Lead was mined as well as iron ore and other
steel products were manufactured, in particular edge tools for use in
agriculture. Some people combined mining and farming, a feature of this
part of the world.
Click on the image to see an enlargement.
Both the old trade
directory and the listed buildings illustrate strongly the dual
importance of industry and agriculture in Wolsingham. Wolsingham's annual
Agricultural show, established in 1763 is one of the oldest in the country.
 Tunstall
House, off Leazes Lane, is a good example of a linear farm: very much
a local feature. All the buildings; house, barns, cow shed, cottages
and outbuildings have been constructed in a straight line and built
against the side of a hill.
Learning Opportunity
- How many linear farms have been listed in Wolsingham? [Go to
advanced search, type Wolsingham in the Place Name box, select Durham
in the County box, Type 'linear' in the Keyword box, click submit]
What do you think were the advantages of this layout?
- How many linear farms are there on Images of England? [Type 'linear
farm' in the Keyword box and click on 'exact', Leave the place name
box empty and make sure 'all counties' shows in the county box] Are
they found all over England or mainly in the North East area? Why
do you think this is so?
- How many of the listed buildings in Wolsingham were connected
to farming? [Go to advanced search, type Wolsingham in the Place Name
box, select Durham in the County box, Click on view building type,
click on the words Agriculture and Subsistence, select All Agriculture
and Subsistence, click submit].
- How many of Wolsingham's farmhouses are still working farms?
What are the others used as now? Why do you think this has happened?
Has the same thing happened in other villages and in other parts of
England?
 The
beautiful scenery around Wolsingham has long attracted tourists. One
of the early attractions was the pure water from the Holy well, marked
still by a striking well house, the largest structure over any well
in Durham.
A quotation, taken from a guide book written in 1951 expresses a strong
view about this combination of working town and tourist attraction.
"This is another little, stone-built town, not unpicturesque
internally, but painfully unpicturesque as approached on its east side,
because of the ugly and unnecessary steelworks that have been cruelly
imposed upon it. Why was it deemed right to plant this terrible disfigurement
just here among pleasant green hill-sides and pleasant pastures, when
there was the whole of the already ruined Durham coal-field to make
choice in?"
Companion into DURHAM, JE Morris, London 1951
Learning Opportunity
- This issue would make an excellent focus for a study of Wolsingham
working towards answering these questions.
- Do you agree or disagree with the quote? Has the ironworks been
a good or bad thing for the town?
- Make 2 columns headed advantages and disadvantages and try to
decide whether you think the steelworks should have been built here.
Think about how Wolsingham would be different today if they had not
been built. Ask people who live in the town and people who work in
the town what they think. Are there any differences?
Sources to help answer these questions would include aerial photographs
available from the National
Monuments Record [NMR] and old
maps which would be obtained locally [in this case from Durham Record
Office].
![Reference 540/570/frame 4172 English Heritage [NMR] RAF photography](../Images/photos%20used%20in%20LZ/150_570_4172.jpg) This
aerial photograph [left] taken in July 1951 [the year of the quotation]
by the RAF clearly shows the layout of the town, complete with ironworks
to the right of the river bend.
Click the images to see an enlargement.
The second photograph [right] was taken in 1975 from
a much lower height and enables you to pick out individual buildings
including the ironworks which was listed in 1987, along with most of
the other buildings listed in Wolsingham.
Click the image to see an enlargement.
Learning Opportunity
- How has Wolsingham developed since this map was published in
1895? Use maps and aerial photographs to study change and continuity.
- Compare them as sources or use to teach geographical skills including;
scale, what maps and photos are used for and interpreting historic
landscape.
Once you have explored the history and development of your area,
and have an overall feel for the place, then you can look at aspects
of the locality in more detail. One way to do this would be to split
your students into groups and have each group research a different topic
and give a presentation to the rest.
Alternatively you may prefer to choose a few aspects and concentrate
on them with the whole class. You can plan topics in advance or allow
pupils to suggest those that look interesting from the general research
they have completed. Some topics may fit in particularly well with specific
subject areas.
There are several aspects of Wolsingham that could be studied
in more detail, supporting National Curriculum programmes
of study.
Buildings Conservation - Links to Citizenship
The preservation and sustainable development of the built environment
is recognised as an important issue for all communities and is included
in the QCA list of suggested topics for citizenshi p.
 This
group of buildings in Front Street [left] includes three listed buildings;
two seventeenth-century cottages and the much larger Whitfield House
[far left] built around the middle of the eighteenth century.
The photograph taken in 1944 [right] shows that the overall appearance
of these buildings has not changed a great deal in more than fifty years.
Learning Opportunity
- Study the buildings in more detail comparing the smaller cottages
with Whitfield House in terms of size, shape, materials etc. For more
ideas on how to study a building click here.
- Look more closely at the two photographs and find examples of
things that have changed and things that are the same.
- Look for other past and present photographs for examples of change
and continuity. Can you find any buildings that have been unsympathetically
altered or appear rather run down?
- Look at the section on how
to trace the history of an historic
building for more suggested activities.
Baal Hill House farmhouse features on the Images of England
website as a bastlehouse
built in the late sixteenth century with a wide stairway leading to
a well defended first floor doorway.
 Baal
[Bale] Hill is recorded in both the 1879
directory and 1881 census [right] with the Angus family listed as
living there in both sources.
Click on the images to see an enlargement.
 The
house is described in the 1879 directory as 'an ancient peel-house, or
fort, which served as a watch tower, and a shelter both for man and beast
during the raids of the northern moss-troopers'.
This photograph taken in 1944 shows that, although the hedge has gone,
Baal Hill farmhouse is largely unaltered except for its windows.
Learning Opportunity
- Compare the extract from the trade
directory with the census
return. Do the two sources complement or contradict each other?
- Find out more about the two sources. Ask pupils to say which
source is likely to be more accurate and why. Which source is the
most useful and why?
- Look up the unfamiliar terms in the list description and trade
directory using the building type thesaurus
on the website. Write a brief history of the house.
- Who do you think the northern moss troopers were? Ask your pupils
to research further or to imagine who they might have been. Use as
stimulus for work in drama or literacy.
- Search the Images of England website to find out how many bastlehouses
have been listed. [go to Advanced search, type the word 'bastle'
in the Building Type box, click submit, go to printer friendly and
print out a list].
- Whereabouts in the country are they? Plot the places on a map.
Are there any outside the North East? If not, can you think of a reason
why? Remember that there may be more than one possible explanation.
Religion and Education - links to History/Citizenship
Wolsingham had a number of churches serving different religious groups,
six of these feature on the Images of England website.
John Wesley made many visits to Weardale and preached in Wolsingham several
times between 1764 and 1790 from a rough stone pulpit at the rear of Whitfield
House.
 The
first Wesleyan meeting house was built in 1776 for the Wolsingham Methodist
Society and John Wesley preached there. The building was later used
as an undertakers and is now part of the outbuildings of Whitfield House.
Two further Wesleyan chapels were constructed in 1836 and 1862 and a
Wesleyan school was built in the High Street in 1856.
In 1885 a Primitive Methodist chapel was built that went out of use
in 1983 when its interior fittings were moved to the USA.
 There
is a long tradition of Catholicism in Wolsingham. A memorial on Redgate
Bank commemorates a Roman Catholic priest, John Duckett, who was arrested
on this spot before being taken to London to be hanged at Tyburn in 1644.
 St.
Thomas of Canterbury RC Church was built in 1854 and an associated school
in 1864. People attended from all over the dale and the numbers grew
when the Wolsingham steelworks opened.
Learning Opportunity
- Look at the Wolsingham
website for the story of John Duckett. Is he commemorated in any
other way?
- Find out if the Methodist tradition was particularly strong in
this region. If so, why was this? Compare to other areas for possible
reasons [NB mining and non mining areas].
Communications - links to Geography
 Early
travellers came by road which was maintained by the Gateshead Turnpike
Trust in the mid nineteenth century when this milestone was placed in
front of number 12 High Street.
At that time there were 13 public houses in Wolsingham, including the
Black Bull,  catering
for the coaches conveying tourists and travellers. Commercial travellers
would have used them both for accommodation and for business meetings
as they moved from town to town. Public houses fulfilled a rather different
role in the nineteenth century from today, the 1879 directory lists
the excise office as being in the Black Bull.
 The
Wear branch of the Stockton and Darlington Railway reached Wolsingham
in 1847 and the station, now a private house, was built in the same
year.
This photograph was taken in 1966 when the station stood derelict. There
was no regular passenger service after 1953 and the stations on the line
closed during the 1960s although goods trains continued to run until the
1980s.
Learning Opportunity
- Assess the impact of both the arrival and closure of the railway
on the town in terms of industry, tourism, population and the environment.
- Talk to residents who remember the railway about how they felt
when it closed and how it affected their lives.
- Look in local old
newspapers for reasons why it closed and evidence of local reactions.
- Investigate if it could be reopened. What would be the advantages
and problems?
Health - links to History
In the early years of the twentieth century Wolsingham's clean air
led to the establishment of two sanatoriums for the treatment of Tuberculosis.
Holywood House, originally built by Charles Attwood, was purchased by
Durham County Council in 1905 and converted into a 100 bed sanatorium.
Learning Opportunity
- Why did Wolsingham have 2 sanatoriums for the treatment of Tuberculosis?
How big an area did they take patients from?
- Why were there such places in the early twentieth century but
not today?
Migration - links to Geography and Citizenship
In the early twentieth century a number of families emigrated from
the Wolsingham area, in particular to Perdue, Saskatchewen, Canada.
Learning Opportunity
- Why did people emigrate from Weardale/Wolsingham?Who were they
and where did they go?
- Look in the newspapers
of the time for advertisements and articles on the families who
emigrated.
- Some of these families still come back to visit Wolsingham.
Why do you think they come back? Look at a geneaology website such
as
GENUKI
- Write a booklet or design a website to tell them what Wolsingham
is like today.
- See if you can find people of the same name in the graveyard
or in old school registers.
- Were people leaving other areas at this time? Find out more about
the assisted places programme.
Wolsingham was chosen to represent a small rural community and not
because it was unusually rich in either listed buildings or historical
associations. Nevertheless it proved to be a place with an interesting
past in its own right that also provoked questions relevant to many
other communities and connected with national issues both past and current.
This study, based on listed buildings, is only an introduction suggesting
some of the interesting themes and sources that could be investigated.
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