High Westwood

High Westwood is a village in County Durham, England, situated a few miles to the north of Consett, near Ebchester and Hamsterley.[1]

Past and present

Once a thriving village with a colliery and coke works, High Westwood is now little more than a few private houses. There was a railway station on the Derwent Valley line from 1904 to 1942.[2] The site of the former Westwood County Junior Mixed and Infant School is now a housing complex, where the houses are named after one of the rows of colliery houses demolished in the early 1970s. There is also a row of six surviving bungalows. The school was built in 1879 and a centenary celebration held in 1979. The school was closed in approximately 2003. There is still a regularly used cricket pitch, although the football pitch and the other amenities are overgrown.[3]

The village is now surrounded by countryside and the old railway line part of a country walkway.[4] Nearby oak woodland still has deer and glades of bluebells, but the red squirrels vanished in the 2000s. Both barn owls and tawny owls are common, along with a wide range of smaller birds.[5] On the 5th July 2016 planning permission was passed for a substantial commercial livery stable to be built in front of the village houses (ref Durham County Council planning portal) despite massive objections from the village and the risk posed by increased traffic on single track roads with no passing places and blind corners. All hopes now rest on the Coal Authority report into the stability of the land. No member of the planning committee had ever been to High Westwood.

References

  1. ↑ Ordnance Survey (2005) Consett & Derwent Reservoir, sheet 307, 1:25,000. Southampton: Ordnance Survey. (Explorer Series); another OS-based map showing relative positions of features, including the closed railway: Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  2. ↑ Paddy Dillon: Walking in Co. Durham... (Milnthorpe, Cumbria: Cicerone Press, 1996). The line itself existed from 1867 to 1963. Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  3. ↑ Durham CC application for village green registration (unsuccessful).Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  4. ↑ Designated as part of National Route 14 and the Sea to Sea Cycle Route. Paddy Dillon....
  5. ↑ Durham Landscape Guidelines Woodland and Forestry: Native Woodland Types in County Durham Retrieved 16 March 2014. Fauna scarcely covered.

Media related to High Westwood at Wikimedia Commons

Coordinates: 54°53′48″N 1°49′17″W / 54.89667°N 1.82139°W / 54.89667; -1.82139


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