Healeyfield is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

County Durham County Durham, officially simply Durham, is a ceremonial county in North East England.UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. The county borders Northumberland and Tyne an ...

, England. The population of the civil parish taken from the 2011 census was 1,544. It is situated to the south west of

Consett Consett is a town in the County Durham (district), County Durham district, in the ceremonial county of County Durham, Durham, England, about south-west of Newcastle upon Tyne. It had a population of 27,394 in 2001 and an estimate of 25,812 in ...

. First documented in the

Boldon Book The Boldon Book (also known as the Boldon Buke) contains the results of a survey of the bishopric of Durham that was completed on the orders of Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham, in 1183, designed to assist the administration of the vast diocesan e ...

as ''Heleie'', “Alain de Chilton, holds Heley, as is contained in his charter, for Cornforth...”. The village is also listed in Bishops Hatfield's survey (1381) as ''Heley'', "...being held by John de Chilton". The Chilton family seem to have held the manor and vill of Healyfield for 200 years as there is a charter of 1280 describing John of Chilton as Lord of Heleyfield (sic). As part of bishop

Hugh du Puiset Hugh de Puiset (Wiktionary:circa, c. 1125 – 3 March 1195) was a medieval Bishop of Durham and Chief Justiciar of England under King Richard I of England, Richard I. He was the nephew of King Stephen of England and Henry of Blois, who b ...

's extension and protection of his demesne, agriculture was pushed in the upper reaches of the Derwent valley including grants made to Healeyfield and other villages in the area. The place name probably means “the high clearing”. There may have been a medieval chapel located at Healeyfield (though there is some confusion in the records with a chapel at Rowley). The chapel at Rowley/Healeyfield is first mentioned in 1228 and again in 1291 (as Ruley). The site of the chapel is not known though in the nineteenth century a ruin described as a chapel was noted near Healeyfield. Healeyfield and the surrounding area had three lead mines; Healeyfield mine, Silvertongue mine and Dean Howl mine which were all disused by the 1920s. There was a smelting mill at nearby Watergate, Castleside. The mill was built in 1805 and this smelted ores from the Healeyfield mines changing over in 1913 to the smelting of lead residues. The mill ceased functioning in the 1920s. The village was the site of a prisoner of war camp during the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

from where two prisoners escaped. The camp was established in August 1916 and the prisoners extracted

ganister A ganister (or sometimes gannister ) is hard, fine-grained quartzose sandstone, or orthoquartzite,Jackson, J. A., 1997, ''Glossary of geology'', 4th ed. American Geological Institute, Alexandria. used in the manufacture of silica brick typically ...

from a nearby quarry.

References

External links

Villages in County Durham {{Durham-geo-stub