Picture Spennymoor History > Tudhoe & Spennymoor Local History Society

Current Acitivities

2008 Programme of Events- details of the Society's programme of events for 2008.

Previous Projects

"Crossing the Jordan to Jerusalem"- a project studying the 1841 & 1851 Census for Spennymoor & Tudhoe

Contact information

For further information regarding events, the society or membership contact: Silvia Wright (Secretary) on 01388 816865

About the Society

Tudhoe & Spennymoor Local History Society was formed in 1989 and has the following aims:

to provide a forum for the discussion of the local history of Tudhoe and Spennymoor and surrounding areas by organising regular, open evening meetings;
to ensure that a record of these discussions is kept and made available for public use;
to encourage research into the local history of Tudhoe and Spennymoor and surrounding areas;
to provide a service to record and copy local records - family photographs, documents etc.

The implementation of these aims is the responsibility of a committee elected by the members of the society attending the annual general meeting held in October each year. Since 1989 the society has developed a significant body of knowledge about the area’s heritage. Features of our heritage studied by the society are :

Brancepeth Parish – in medieval times Tudhoe and Spennymoor were part of lands controlled by the Nevilles of Brancepeth Castle and were linked by a ford across the River Wear;
Tudhoe as a Catholic village during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries when priests were banned and “recusants” persecuted;
Local landowners – the Catholic Salvins of Croxdale and the Shaftos of Whitworth, descended from Bonny Bobbie Shafto;
The Clarence Railway built in the 1830s as a competitor to the Stockton and Darlington Railway;
Tudhoe ironworks, part of Charles Attwood’s Weardale Iron and Coal Company empire in the 1850s, where the Bessemer process was perfected.