Cassop (formerly New Cassop) is a village in County Durham, in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. It has a population of about 500 and is located near the city of Durham. A former

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

village, mining is no longer the main occupation of Cassop's inhabitants due to extensive mine closure over the last 30 years. Formerly this village was in the parish of

Kelloe Kelloe is a village and civil parish in County Durham, England. The population of the civil parish as taken at the 2011 Census was 1,502. It is situated to the south-east of Durham. History The village takes its name from the family of Kelloe ...

, but like many of the villages in that extensive parish, it broke away during the 19th century in this case to form the parish of Cassop-cum-Quarrington, with the neighbouring village,

Quarrington Hill Quarrington Hill is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated a short distance to the north of Kelloe. Having been part of the extensive parish of Kelloe, it merged with the village of Cassop during the 19th century to form the parish ...

. Cassop Primary School is believed to have been the first in the UK to generate some of its own electricity with its own

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. W ...

which was erected in February 1999.

Religious sites

The church of St. Paul, Cassop cum Quarrington was built in 1868. The stones that were used in its construction were allegedly transported by William Smith, innkeeper of the Half Moon Inn,

, as he was the only villager to own such a cart to make this possible. It was closed during the 1980s and is now demolished. Services for the parish are held at Bowburn. The churchyard is still used for burials.

References

External links

Cassop History Society

Villages in County Durham {{Durham-geo-stub