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Castleside

County Durham geography stubsUse British English from December 2014Villages in County Durham
Castleside, County Durham
Castleside, County Durham

Castleside is a village in County Durham, England. It is situated a short distance to the south-west of Consett. Castleside is covered by the civil parish of Healeyfield.The village centre is located on the main A68 road which runs between Edinburgh and Darlington and the village crossroads allow easy access to Consett, the North Pennines and Stanhope. To the northeast lies another small village called Moorside. The parish church, dedicated to St John, was designed by Ewan Christian and is a reproduction of a church he had seen and admired while on holiday in Switzerland. The church was consecrated on 7 March 1867. There was a Wesleyan Chapel at Watergate, Castleside, which was erected in 1805. The chapel was extended in 1877 and closed in 1970. A Primitive Methodist chapel was erected in 1843 on the Consett Rd, and extended in 1884. It closed in the 1990s and is now a residence.The nearby dwelling of Wharnley Burn is a 14th century cottage and was home to the moss trooper Thomas Raw (d. 1714). He was buried in a field near his home believing he could not be buried in a church. In the early 1860s the grave was opened and the grave slab removed, supposedly to Satley.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Castleside (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 54.833 ° E -1.879 °
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Address

Castleside Club

Rowley Bank 13
DH8 9QT
England, United Kingdom
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Website
castlesideclub.co.uk

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Castleside, County Durham
Castleside, County Durham
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Nearby Places

Allensford
Allensford

Allensford is a small country park and hamlet in County Durham, in England. It is on the River Derwent, about 2 miles SW of Consett, and 1 mile north of Castleside. Allensford was first recorded as Aleynforth in Bishop Hatfield's survey of c. 1382. The placename is sometimes listed as Allansford; "At Allansford...is a bridge over the Derwent into Northumberland, surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery on that stream; there are a few cottages on each side of the river".It is uncertain when a bridge replaced the ford. However, a bridge was in existence in the late 17th century when the structure was in a "very ruinous and in greate decay” according to the Northumberland Quarter Sessions for 1687–1697.Allensford Mill farmhouse was originally called the Belsay Castle Inn, named after the estate of the Middleton family of Belsay Castle. Part of the inn was built in the late 17th century and may have been a bastle. Later additions continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The inn was licensed until 1869. The upper room in the outbuilding served as a nonconformist chapel.Denis Hayford (c.1635–1733), a pioneer of the steel industry, acquired the lease of Allensford furnace and forge in 1692; this was upstream from his established business in Shotley Bridge. The lease seems to have lapsed in 1713. The site of the furnace is marked on Ordnance Survey maps.It has a dedicated campsite. The adjacent woodland forms the Allensford Woods Local Nature Reserve, covering 17.5 hectares (43 acres).

Healeyfield
Healeyfield

Healeyfield is a village and civil parish in County Durham, England. The population of the civil parish taken from the 2011 census was 1,544. It is situated to the south west of Consett. First documented in the Boldon Book as Heleie, “Alain de Chilton, holds Heley, as is contained in his charter, for Cornforth...”. The village is also listed in Bishops Hatfield's survey (1381) as Heley, "...being held by John de Chilton". The Chilton family seem to have held the manor and vill of Healyfield for 200 years as there is a charter of 1280 describing John of Chilton as Lord of Heleyfield (sic). As part of bishop Hugh du Puiset's extension and protection of his demesne, agriculture was pushed in the upper reaches of the Derwent valley including grants made to Healeyfield and other villages in the area. The place name probably means “the high clearing”.There may have been a medieval chapel located at Healeyfield (though there is some confusion in the records with a chapel at Rowley). The chapel at Rowley/Healeyfield is first mentioned in 1228 and again in 1291 (as Ruley). The site of the chapel is not known though in the nineteenth century a ruin described as a chapel was noted near Healeyfield.Healeyfield and the surrounding area had three lead mines; Healeyfield mine, Silvertongue mine and Dean Howl mine which were all disused by the 1920s. There was a smelting mill at nearby Watergate, Castleside. The mill was built in 1805 and this smelted ores from the Healeyfield mines changing over in 1913 to the smelting of lead residues. The mill ceased functioning in the 1920s.The village was the site of a prisoner of war camp during the First World War from where two prisoners escaped. The camp was established in August 1916 and the prisoners extracted ganister from a nearby quarry.

Murder of Harry Collinson

The murder of Harry Collinson, the planning officer for Derwentside District Council, occurred on 20 June 1991 at Butsfield, County Durham, England. At the time of the murder, the Derwentside District Council was involved in a dispute with Albert Dryden over the erection of a dwelling by Dryden in the countryside without planning permission. At approximately 9:00 am on 20 June 1991, as television news crews filmed, Dryden aimed a handgun—a .455 Webley Mk VI revolver—at Collinson and shot him dead. As the journalists and council staff fled, Dryden opened fire again, wounding television reporter Tony Belmont and Police Constable Stephen Campbell.A standoff situation followed as armed police officers—who had been on stand-by for the incident at nearby Consett—raced to the scene and Dryden retreated to a caravan on the property. Dryden warned them that the buildings were booby trapped with explosives, that he had planted land mines in the ground around the property, and had a cache of hand grenades inside the caravan. At approximately 11:20 am, police negotiators offered to install a field telephone to enable them to better communicate with him. Dryden came out of the caravan to the perimeter fence to watch them and, realising that Dryden's holster was empty, tactical firearms officer Sgt John Taylor immediately wrestled him to the ground. Assisted by PCs Chris Barber, Andy Reay and Philip Brown, Taylor was able to subdue Dryden and he was taken into police custody.Dryden was tried at Newcastle upon Tyne during March–April 1992. Found guilty of Collinson's murder, the attempted murder of council solicitor Michael Dunston—whom he had apparently been aiming for when he shot at the group—and the wounding of a reporter and a police officer, Dryden was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment and two terms of seven years' imprisonment, to run concurrently. Dryden's appeal against the conviction was dismissed, and his applications for parole were refused as he showed no remorse for his crimes. In 2017, Dryden suffered a stroke and was released from prison to a nursing home on compassionate grounds. Dryden died on 15 September 2018 aged 78 in a care home following his prison release.