Stanhope

Stanhope, the capital of Upper Weardale, is a small town of great character and individuality, which marks the boundary between the softer scenery of lower Weardale and the wilder scenery to the west. The stone cross in the market place is the only reminder of a weekly market held in the town by virtue of a 1421 charter. The market continued until Victorian times, but today the town continues to serve the surrounding villages as an important local centre for shops and supplies.

Enjoying an attractive rural setting in the centre of the Dale, with a choice of local walks, Stanhope, in its quiet way, is becoming a small tourist centre with pleasant shops and cafés. Stanhope enjoyed its greatest period of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries when the lead and iron-stone industries were at their height, as reflected in the town’s buildings and architecture.

The most dominant building in the Market Square is Stanhope Castle, a rambling structure complete with mock-Gothic crenellated towers, galleries and battlements. The building is, in fact, an elaborate folly built by the MP for Gateshead, Cuthbert Rippon in 1798 on the site of a medieval manor house. In 1875 it was enlarged to contain a private collection of mineral displays and stuffed birds for the entertainment of Victorian grouse-shooting parties. In the gardens is the Durham Dales Centre, which contains the Tourist Information Centre, a tea room and a sculptured children’s animal trail. The Dales Garden was first developed as an exhibit at the Gateshead National Gardens Festival in 1990 and has been re-created here using typical Dales cottage garden plants.

St Thomas’s Church, by the Market Square, has a tower whose base is Norman, and some medieval glass in the west window. In the churchyard is a remarkable fossil tree stump which was discovered in 1962 in a local quarry.

The Weardale Railway runs for five miles between Stanhope and Wolsingham in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Subject to availability, the trains are steam-hauled.

Stanhope Old Hall, above Stanhope Burn Bridge, is generally accepted to be one of the most impressive buildings in Weardale. This huge, fortified manor house was designed to repel Scottish raiders. The privately owned hall itself is part medieval, part Elizabethan and part Jacobean. The outbuildings included a cornmill, a brew house and cattle yards.

One of the most important Bronze Age archaeological finds ever made in Britain was at Heathery Burn, a side valley off Stanhope Burn. In 1850, quarrymen cut through the floor of a cave to find a huge hoard of bronze and gold ornaments, amber necklaces, pottery, spearheads, animal bones and parts of chariots. The treasures are now kept in London’s British Museum.