Moving out of what had been the family home in Chester, into a residential college in Durham, marked my transition from childhood and school days into early adult life. Little did I realise in the mid-1970s that I was to live in North East England longer than I would live anywhere else. Part of me enjoys walking down the principal shopping streets of Durham to be greeted in turn by half a dozen close acquaintances. Yet part of me yearns for the unfamiliar. Part of me feels at home in Durham, not simply because it has become familiar, but also because the city has a depth of history, a university, a cathedral, and much of casual beauty. Yet part of me feels naggingly in exile from I know not where. I do not feel as though I belong to the North East, nor can I say that I am of its people. I cannot imagine North Eastern people saying of me: "He's one of us." Yet when I have visited Chester or London, the distance has been greater.
I first encountered Durham in the early 1970s, while staying for a few days' holiday in bed & breakfast in Darlington. Durham was a pleasant day-trip tourist destination, and remains so. I have since come to know that there are many Durhams, and many North Easts. When I moved to Durham in October1976, North East England was, in part, characterised by coal-mining (the Durham and Northumberland coalfields), steel-making (particularly at Consett and Middlesbrough), and ship-building (particularly on the rivers Tyne and Wear).
However, the history of North East England stretches back to Roman times: Hadrian's Wall extends from Wallsend, bordering the North Sea, to Carlisle, bordering the Solway Firth and the Irish Sea. Roman roads criss-cross County Durham. There is the remains of a Roman bath (and by implication, a Roman villa) at Old Durham, about two miles from where I live.
Christianity was harboured for centuries on Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, and was home to St. Cuthbert. Jarrow (perhaps better known in the history of twentieth century popular politics as the starting point for the 1932 Jarrow March to London) was the Dark Ages home of one of Britain's earliest historians: the Venerable Bede. There is a little Saxon church in the middle of an economically-poor estate of houses at Escomb, near Bishop Auckland. Cuthbert's miraculously uncorrupted body, having been moved south from Northumberland to escape the ravages of Viking raiders, was finally laid to rest at Durham, where a cathedral was built, and as a result became a European focus for medieval pilgrimage. Cuthbert's tomb, behind the main altar in Durham Cathedral is still visited by many tourists. Bede's tomb lies at the other end of the cathedral, in the Galilee Chapel. The bishops of Durham became so rich and powerful that the monarch granted them a high degree of autonomy. They were the Prince Bishops, rulers of the County Palatine of Durham (an autonomous status granted to the bishops of only one other see: Chester). They had their own court, as well as their own mint. Durham and Northumberland remained in the forefront of border clashes and wars with Scotland until the 17th century (when Scots occupied Durham Cathedral, disfiguring many of the tomb effigies). Northern Christianity clashed with politics again in the 1980s, when David Jenkins was enthroned as Bishop of Durham: he spoke against callous capitalism and the love of money, which, at least from a North East England perspective, were prevailing features of Thatcher's Britain.
The Stockton and Darlington Railway was the first steam railway in the world. George Stephenson was one of the most significant locomotive and railway engineers. Darlington, with its railway and Quaker heritage, is a much larger town than Durham with its cathedral, university and lengthy history.
County Durham has suffered some terrible pollution problems: much of the coastline has been badly soiled with coal-mining waste, the seawater washing up black. Many streams are poisoned with the leakage of water polluted with heavy metals from old lead mines up Weardale. Opencast coal mining and quarrying for limestone have been ripping the living integument from the face of the earth, and the subsequent landscaping looks like plastic surgery. On the other hand, the upper end of Weardale, in the northern Pennines, is one of England's least trammelled wildernesses, with some rare plants still surviving from the last Ice Age.
Durham City: Cathedral (with its sanctuary knocker, shown below), Castle and Palace Green (World Heritage site); medieval city layout; river Wear; Botanical Gardens.
Darlington, Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Newton Aycliffe, Sedgefield, Spennymoor, Crook, Willington (Style Restaurant), Peterlee, Seaham, Chester-le-Street, Stanley, Consett
Tyne & Wear:
Gateshead: Shipley Art Gallery;
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Laing Art Gallery (William Martin paintings), Tyneside Cinema;
North Tyneside: St. Mary's Lighthouse, Monkseaton, Whitley Bay, Cullercoats, North Shields, Wallsend;
South Tyneside: Jarrow, South Shields, Marsden Rock & Grotto;
Sunderland: Glass Centre, St Peter's Monkwearmouth;
Northumberland: Hadrian's Wall (Housesteads, Vindolanda, Chesters), Belsay, Wallington, Cragside (Armstrong), the Cheviot Hills, Morpeth, Alnwick, Alnmouth, Beadnell, Bamburgh Castle, Seahouses, Farne Islands (seals and puffins), Lindisfarne, Berwick-upon-Tweed.
