County town: Durham
Durham was a County Palatine — effectively a state within a state — granted by William the Conqueror to the Prince Bishops of Durham as a defensive buffer against Scotland. Its bishop held royal powers within its boundaries.
County Durham occupies the land between the Tyne and Tees, rising westward from the Durham coastal plain to the Pennines and the North Pennine moors. Its defining monument is Durham Cathedral, begun in 1093, whose Romanesque interior is considered one of the great achievements of European architecture. The cathedral stands on a rock above the Wear, surrounded by the castle of the Prince Bishops — a fortified ecclesiastical capital for the medieval north. The county's eastern coalfield, which developed from the 17th century, transformed its character utterly, making it one of the industrial heartlands of the Victorian empire. Remains of Hadrian's Wall run along its northern edge.
Durham was not surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086. The survey covered most of England south of the Tees, but the northern border counties — including Durham — lay outside the effective reach of the Norman administration at the time of the survey.
England's 39 historic counties, established between the 9th and 12th centuries, are the framework through which English local history, legal records, and landscape have been organised for a thousand years. Most survive today as ceremonial counties, their boundaries deeply embedded in place identity.
This page introduces the historic county of Durham. A full Aubrey report for a location within it pulls together everything the record actually holds about that ground, from the geology beneath it to the last coin dropped in a field:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Read in-depth research reports on notable historical places across the UK — explore →
Durham contains 166 scheduled monuments — sites of national importance protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.
Browse scheduled monuments in EnglandAn Aubrey report for a specific location in Durham draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.