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	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
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	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
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	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Chester-le-Street

Chester-le-Street is a busy market town built around the confluence of Cong Burn and the River Wear. There was a Roman fort here at one time, and the street on which the town once stood was a Roman road, later replaced by the Great North Road.

The medieval St Mary’s and St Cuthbert’s Church is built on the site of a cathedral established in AD 883 by the monks of Lindisfarne carrying the body of St Cuthbert. His coffin rested here for 113 years until the monks took it to its final resting place at Durham. There are no fewer than 14 effigies (not all of them genuine) of members of the Lumley family within the church, though they don’t mark the sites of their graves. Next to the church is the Ankers House Museum, situated in the medieval anchorage. Between 1383 and 1547, various anchorites, or Christian hermits, lived here. These holy people were what might be called extreme hermits, living walled up, with a squint to see the altar, an opening for food and a grave ready outside when the time came.

Lumley Castle, to the east across the River Wear, was built in 1389 by Sir Ralph Lumley, whose descendant, Sir Richard Lumley, became the 1st Earl of Scarborough in the 1690’s. In the early 18th century it was refashioned by the architect Vanbrugh for the 2nd Earl, and turned into a magnificent stately home. But gradually the castle fell out of favour with the Lumley family and they chose to stay in their estates in Yorkshire instead. For a while it was owned by Durham University before being turned into the luxurious hotel that it is today.

Waldridge Fell Country Park, two miles south-west of Chester-le-Street and close to Waldridge village, is County Durham’s last surviving area of lowland heathland. A car park and signed footpaths give access to over 300 acres of open countryside, rich in natural history.