Knitsley is a hamlet in and former
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 ...
, now in the parish of
Healeyfield, in the
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 ...
district, in the ceremonial county of
Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city in north east England
**County Durham, a ceremonial county which includes Durham
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in North Carolina, United States
Durham may also refer to:
Places
...
, England. It is situated a short distance to the south of the town 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 ...
. In 1931 the parish had a population of 2276.
The name derives from
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
and means the meadow where knights were//the knight's field/knight's clearing.
Knitsley is mentioned in a charter of c. 1250 in which Adam of Knychley held lands near
Iveston. Further charters of 1280 list Hugh of Cnicheley and William of Knicheley, the latter a witness for John de Chilton of
Healyfield. In
Bishop Hatfield's Survey (1381), Robert of Kellawe held the vill of Knycheley. The lands passed through various holders including, the Surtees, Eure and Claxton families, the latter holding the manor until the 1620s. In the 1800s the land was owned by the
earls of Coventry
Earl of Coventry is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of England. The first creation for the Villiers family was created in 1623 and took its name from the city of Coventry. It became extinct in 1687. A decade later, the second ...
until it was sold to tenants in 1920.
With the
Inclosure Act 1773 (
13 Geo. 3. c. 81) the common lands of Knitsley were
enclosed
Enclosure or inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land", enclosing it, and by doing so depriving commoners of their traditional rights of access and usage. Agreements to enc ...
and sold off.
The landscape gardener and arboriculturalist, Thomas White (1736-1811), took advantage of the enclosure and sale of land purchasing over 200 acres. He planted a wide variety of trees, landscaped the gardens and built a house, Woodlands Hall, in 1779. With the death of Thomas White the younger in 1831 the house and estate passed through numerous families including John Richardson (died 1871) of
Shotley Park. The estate was then bought by William Brewis Van Haansbergen, who lived there until his death in 1921.
There was a Primitive Methodist meeting house (listed as Salem Chapel on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map) established in 1842. It seems to have been demolished in the 1950s.
There is a pub (some way outside of the village) called The Old Mill. A telephone box once existed at the end of Hownsgill drive but this was removed many years ago due to lack of use.
The
railway station
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
serving the
North Eastern Railway was opened in 1862. It existed until 1964 when cutbacks in the railway system dramatically reduced rail services in Britain. The old railway line is now part of the
Lanchester Valley Railway Path.
Civil parish
Knitsley was formerly in
Conside-cum-Knitsley township
A township is a form of human settlement or administrative subdivision. Its exact definition varies among countries.
Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, this tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Canad ...
, in the parish of
Lanchester, from 1894 Knitsley was a civil parish in its own right. On 1 April 1937, the parish was abolished and merged with Healeyfield and Consett.
References
Further reading
* Turnbull, Deborah K. M. and Louise Wickham (2022). ''Thomas White (c. 1736-1811) : redesigning the northern British landscape''. Windgather Press. ISBN 9781914427015
* Oxberry, John (1916). ''The Whites of Woodlands and the Rev. John Hodgson d. 1845''. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Newcastle-on-Tyne 3rd ser. Vol. 7. p. 251-57
* Tait, Alan Andrew (2009). Robert Adam and Thomas White at Woodlands, County Durham in ''Essays in Scots and English architectural history : a festschrift in honour of John Frew''. Ed. David Jones et al. p. 47-53
External links
Subterranea Britannica entry on Knitsley Railway Station
Hamlets in County Durham
Former civil parishes in County Durham
{{Durham-geo-stub