Durham

The Victoria County History of Durham

The Victoria County History of Durham was revived in 1999, the Durham VCH has produced the first red volume in the county series since 1928. Durham Volume IV, published in 2005, is an important new history of Darlington. This was preceded by the first ever VCH paperback, a study of the Darlington landscape. The Townscape of Darlington by Gillian Cookson, with contributions by Christine M. Newman and Graham R. Potts, was published in 2003. Five Red Book volumes have been published to date.

Part of Volume II, covering the medieval religious houses of the county, and Volume III which describes the city of Durham and the Stockton ward in the south east of the county is free, open-access on British History Online. For full access to all volumes, check your local library catalogue or your local archive. 

Current work in the county is concentrated on upper Teesdale and will result in two VCH shorts on the parishes of Gainford and Middleton in Teesdale.

Publications

Durham V: Sunderland

Edited by Gillian Cookson

Famed across Europe during Bede's time and the heyday of Wearmouth monastery, Sunderland found a less celebrated renown in the twentieth century with the distress of its heavy industries between the wars, and their final extinction in the 1980s. Between those very contrasting eras, its story is one of re-invention and of a growing industrial and commercial might. The coal trade transformed the town during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; shipbuilding came to the fore in the nineteenth, and Wearside became the nation's, and the world's, greatest shipbuilder. Though it lacked formal local government before 1835, this was a wealthy and relatively sophisticated town, with a great and spectacular early iron bridge (1796).

This volume covers the history of Sunderland from the earliest times and into the twenty-first century, including its landscape and buildings, government, trade and industry, politics and social institutions.

Published 19th November as part of the VCH Red Book Series. Buy on Boydell & Buyer.