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 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]
References
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Paddy Dillon: Walking in Co. Durham... (Milnthorpe, Cumbria: Cicerone Press, 1996). The line itself existed from 1867 to 1963. Retrieved 16 March 2014.
- ↑ Durham CC application for village green registration (unsuccessful).Retrieved 16 March 2014.
- ↑ Designated as part of National Route 14 and the Sea to Sea Cycle Route. Paddy Dillon....
- ↑ Durham Landscape Guidelines Woodland and Forestry: Native Woodland Types in County Durham Retrieved 16 March 2014. Fauna scarcely covered.
- Residents' communications, 1966 to present day.
External links
Media related to High Westwood at Wikimedia Commons
Coordinates: 54°53′48″N 1°49′17″W / 54.89667°N 1.82139°W