Place:


Penshaw  County Durham

 

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Penshaw like this:

PAINSHAW, Penshaw, or Pensher, a village, atownship, and a chapelry, in Houghton-le-Spring parish, Durham. The village stands on an eminence, adjacent to a junction of the Sunderland and Durham railway with a line to South Shields and near the river Wear, 5¾ miles S W by W of Sunderland; takes its name from thewords Pen and Shaw, signifying "a hill" and "a wood; "consists of two parts, called Old Painshaw and New Painshaw; and has a station at the railway junction. ...


The Victoria bridge takes the railway over the Wear, in the vicinity of the village; was erected in 1838, at a cost of about £35,000; and measures 710 feet in length, 21 feetin width, and 130 feet in height. The township comprises 1,066 acres. Real property, £7, 536; of which £1, 800 are in mines, and £1, 475 in quarries. Pop., 2,075. Houses, 426. Coal-works here belong to the Marchioness of Londonderry. An open Doric temple, 100 feet long, 53 feet wide, and 70 feet high, stands on Penshaw Hill; was erected in 1844-5, to the memory of the first Earl of Durham; and commands an extensive panoramic view. The chapelry is more extensive than the township, and was constituted in 1838, and reconstituted in 1846. Post-town, Fence-Houses. Pop. in 1861, 3, 537. Houses, 726. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Durham. Value, £380.* Patron, the Bishop of Manchester. The church was built in 1754. There are a Wesleyan chapel, and a recently erected parochial school. A section of the chapelry was constituted a separate charge in 1866; bears the name of Barnmoor; and is a p. curacy of thevalue of £200, in the patronage of alternately the Crown and the Bishop of Durham.

Penshaw through time

Penshaw is now part of Sunderland district. Click here for graphs and data of how Sunderland has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Penshaw itself, go to Units and Statistics.

How to reference this page:

GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Penshaw, in Sunderland and County Durham | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.

URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/2775

Date accessed: 28th March 2024


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