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County Durham

County Durham's Location within England
County Durham's Location within England
County Durham's Coat of Arms
County Durham's Coat of Arms

County Durham's Districts

  1. City of Durham
  2. Easington
  3. Sedgefield
  4. Teesdale
  5. Wear Valley
  6. Derwentside
  7. Chester-le-Street
  8. Hartlepool (unitary)
  9. Darlington (unitary)
  10. Stockton-on-Tees (unitary)*

* Only the part of the borough to the north of the River Tees is within the ceremonial County Durham.

County Durham is a county in north-east England. Its county town is Durham. It is a county of contrasts: the remote and sparsely populated dales and moors of the Pennines characterise the interior; while nearer the coast the county is highly urbanised, and was once dominated by the coal mining industry.

Geography
Status Ceremonial and (smaller) Non-metropolitan county
Traditional county
Region North East England
Area
- Total
- Admin Council
- Admin Area
Ranked 19th
2,676 km²
Ranked 23rd
2,226 km²
Admin HQ Durham
ISO 3166-2 GB-DUR
ONS code 20
NUTS 3 UKC14
Demographics
Population
- Total (2003 est.)
- Density
- Admin Council
- Admin Pop
Ranked 23rd
868,813
319 / km²
Ranked 27th
494,159
Ethnicity 98.6% White
Politics
Executive Labour
Members of Parliament Hilary Armstrong
Roberta Blackman-Woods
Tony Blair
Frank Cook
John Cummings
Helen Goodman
Kevan Jones
Alan Milburn
Dari Taylor
Iain Wright

The name

The form of the county name is unique in England. Many counties are named after their principal town, but the expected form here would be Durhamshire. The reason it is called County Durham instead is that the Prince-Bishops of Durham historically exercised power in regions outside the county as well, so the inner part was named County Durham as opposed to the rest of the estate of Durham. Note that the form County X is standard for Irish counties, with no such significance.

Geographical extent

County Durham is roughly bounded by the watershed of the Pennines in the west, the River Tees in the south, the North Sea in the east and the Rivers Tyne and Derwent in the north. The name County Durham, however, is used to refer to three distinct entities: the traditional, ceremonial, and administrative counties.

Traditional county

The county traditionally extends to the south bank of the River Tyne and includes Sunderland, South Shields, and Gateshead. It borders the counties of Cumberland, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. The east of the county between the Ryhope district of Sunderland and Seaton Carew in Hartlepool is the coastline of the North Sea. Several exclaves have existed in the county's history, including Bedlingtonshire, Norhamshire, Islandshire (incorporated into Northumberland in 1844), and Crayke, now in North Yorkshire. Startforth Rural District is traditionally part of the North Riding of Yorkshire. The modern unitary authorities of Hartlepool, Darlington, and Stockton-on-Tees are part of the traditional County Durham.

Ceremonial county

Durham County Council was established along with all the other English county councils in 1888. Major local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974 created the metropolitan boroughs of Sunderland, South Tyneside and Gateshead out of County Durham into the newly established metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear. At the same time, the new non-metropolitan county of Cleveland took out Stockton-on-Tees and Hartlepool. County Durham did however gain the rural district of Startforth south of the River Tees near to Barnard Castle. Since then, Cleveland has been abolished, but Stockton-on-Tees and Hartlepool have not been returned to Durham, except for the purposes of Lord-Lieutanancy. County Durham borders on the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

Administrative county

The present Durham County Council administers the area of the ceremonial county, with the exception of Hartlepool, Darlington, and Stockton-on-Tees, which are unitary authorities.

There are seven local government districts. They are:

On 1 April 1997, the borough of Darlington with its population of 100,000 became a unitary authority and thus administratively separate from County Durham. It continues to share the police and fire services with the areas under County Council control.

Options for change

In May 2004 options for regional government were published which, if adopted, would have resulted in the removal of four of the districts from Durham County Council's jurisdiction to form two unitary authorities, and the abolition of the three remaining borough councils to make County Durham a unitary authority in its own right. This did not eventually occur.

On 4 November 2004 a referendum was held on proposals to introduce an elected regional assembly for the North East of England. At the same time as this, the electorate was asked to choose between two options for the organisation of local government below the regional tier. The assembly proposal was rejected overwhelmingly, making the question of unitary authorities in County Durham moot.

For County Durham the options were:

  • a single authority for the existing County Council area
  • three authorities for the existing County Council area

Option 1

  1. Hartlepool
  2. Stockton-on-Tees
  3. Darlington
  4. Durham County Council

Option 2

  1. Hartlepool
  2. Stockton-on-Tees
  3. Darlington
  4. South Durham
    (Sedgefield, Teesdale and Wear Valley)
  5. North Durham
    (Chester-le-Street and Derwentside)
  6. East Durham
    (Durham and Easington)

Settlements

This is a list of the main towns in County Durham. The area covered is the entire ceremonial county, hence the inclusion of towns which are no longer administered by Durham County Council.

Places of Interest

 

 

The above article in gray is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia Article titled:

 

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