Crime Rigg and Sherburn Hill Quarries

Shadforth is a village in County Durham, England. It is situated a few miles to the east of Durham. The historic centre of the village is designated a conservation area. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 2118.Shadforth is also a civil parish that also incorporates Ludworth and Sherburn Hill.

Sherburn Hill is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated to the east of Sherburn. From 1835 to 1965, the Sherburn Hill Colliery operated near the village. In 1851, the Ebenezer Primitive Methodist Church was established in Sherburn Hill. Since the merger with the nearby Bethel Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1968, the church has been called the Sherburn Hill Methodist Church. Sherburn Hill Colliery opened in 1835, owned then by the Earl of Durham. By the 1890s it was owned by Lambton Collieries Ltd, and the pit employed 300 men and boys, producing 400 tons of coal per day. By 1914 there were 1,260 people employed at the colliery (1,071 working below ground, and 189 on the surface). In 1923 the colliery came under the ownership of Dorman, Long & Co. Ltd. The colliery consistently employed over a thousand people during the 20th century up to 1964. Sherburn Hill Colliery closed on the 7th of August 1965.

Littletown is a village in the parish of Pittington, County Durham, England. It is situated a few miles to the east of Durham. The village was previously the site of the Lambton Colliery.

Old Cassop is a hamlet in County Durham, in England. It is situated a few miles to the south-east of Durham. Old Cassop lies within the Cassop-cum-Quarrington civil parish. Old Cassop is about a quarter of a mile south of the A181 road and is accessible only by an unclassified single-track road. It is covered by a conservation area to preserve its character.

Sherburn Hill is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in County Durham, England. It lies just south of the road between the villages of Sherburn and Sherburn Hill, some 5.5 km east of Durham city. A disused quarry occupies part of the site. The site supports an area of semi-natural magnesian limestone grassland, in which blue moor-grass, Sesleria albicans, is the dominant species. Glaucous sedge, Carex flacca, quaking grass, Briza media, meadow oat-grass, Avenula pratensis, rock-rose, Helianthemum nummularium, and fragrant orchid, Gymnadenia conopsea, are common, while sea plantain, Plantago maritima, is locally abundant in the grassland at the edge of limestone spoil heaps. The site has one of the largest populations of the scarce Durham Argus butterfly, Aricia artaxerxes salmacis, and the rare cistus forester moth, Adscita geryon, has also been recorded.

Elemore Hall is a mid-18th-century country house, now in use as a residential special school, near Pittington, County Durham, England. It is a Grade I listed building.

Ludworth is a pit village in County Durham, England situated between Durham and Peterlee. It consists of just over 350 houses in three main housing estates (Barnard Avenue, Moor Crescent and Springfield Meadows) and a few smaller streets. Ludworth has a post office, a primary school, a community centre and a printers. The village used to have a church, two Methodist chapels and a fish shop, most of which were destroyed in a fire. The last public house in Ludworth, The Queen's Head, has been closed since before 2009. Ludworth Tower was originally a medieval manor house, founded by the de Ludworth family. In 1422, Thomas Holden added a rectangular pele tower, when he was granted licence to crenellate his manorial complex, by Cardinal Langley. The only surviving remains are the barrel-vaulted basement, the three storey west wall and fragments of a first floor spiral stair in the south wall. The remains can be seen on the left as you come into the village from Shadforth.

Cassop (formerly New Cassop) is a village in County Durham, in England. It has a population of about 500 and is located near the city of Durham. A former mining village, mining is no longer the main occupation of Cassop's inhabitants due to extensive mine closure over the last 30 years. Formerly this village was in the parish of Kelloe, but like many of the villages in that extensive parish, it broke away during the 19th century in this case to form the parish of Cassop-cum-Quarrington, with the neighbouring village, Quarrington Hill. Cassop Primary School is believed to have been the first in the UK to generate some of its own electricity with its own wind turbine which was erected in February 1999.

Cassop Vale is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Durham City district of County Durham, England. It lies between the villages of Bowburn and Cassop, 7 km south-east of the centre of Durham.. The site is important as one of the larger areas of grassland developed on magnesium limestone. This rock has a restricted distribution in England and grassland associated with it is confined almost entirely to south-east Tyneside and County Durham, usually in small, scattered patches that are threatened by quarrying and modern agricultural practices. Habitats at Cassop Vale include grassland, scrub, woodland and wetland, the last fed by spring-lines. The area also includes recolonised open quarries and mine spoil-heaps, which add to the floral diversity. The main grass species on the magnesian limestone is blue moor-grass Sesleria albicans amongst which grow fragrant orchid Gymnadenia conopsea, cowslip, Primula veris, rock rose Helianthemum nummularium, and quaking grass, Briza media. Several rare and local species are present, including globeflower, Trollius europaeus, birds's-eye primrose, Primula farinosa, lesser club-moss, Selaginella selaginoides, and moonwort, Botrychium lunaria. Elsewhere there is neutral grassland with red fescue and such herbs as cat’s-ear, earthnut and knapweed.The scrub is dominated by hawthorn, gorse and hazel and on the basic soils grow woodruff, dog's mercury and sanicle. The small flushes on the springline are dominated by rushes and sedges, but are also home to marsh valerian, marsh ragwort, ragged robin and northern marsh-orchid. The wetlands are fringed by common spike-rush, soft rush and greater willow-herb.The site also supports a diverse invertebrate fauna that includes populations of the Durham argus butterfly, Aricia artaxerxes salmacis, and the least minor moth Photedes captiuncula.

Hallgarth is a small village in County Durham, England, to the east of Durham. It is in the parish of Pittington and is described there.

Pittington Hill is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in County Durham, England. It lies adjacent to the village of Pittington, some 6 km north-east of Durham city. A disused quarry occupies part of the site. The hill slopes and former quarry support an extensive area of primary magnesian limestone grassland. Blue moor-grass, Sesleria albicans, a characteristic plant of such grassland, is present but not abundant in the primary grassland on the hill slopes, where herbs such as rock-rose, Helianthemum nummularium, are more common; blue moor-grass is more plentiful in the secondary grassland on the quarry floor and spoil heaps, where it is associated with species such as quaking grass, Briza media, salad burnet, Sanguisorba minor, and autumn gentian, Gentianella amarella.

Dabble Bank is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the County Durham district of County Durham, England. It lies about 1 km west of the village of Haswell and about 9 km east of the city of Durham. The site is important for its communities of nationally scarce grassland on Magnesian Limestone and in particular for its unusual location, in a small valley cut into the limestone plateau. A feature of the site is grassland characterised by downy oat-grass, Avenula pubescens, this being a vegetation type which nationally has a scattered distribution on lowland limestones and which is rare in County Durham. Among the species found is the pyramidal orchid, Anacamptis pyramidalis, which is rare in the county.