High Spen, County Durham : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about High Spen. You may be able to find further references to High Spen in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
High Spen Colliery Bartholomew

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to High Spen within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Charles Wesley Sept. 2 - Dec. 30, 1745: Yorkshire and Durham 2
Charles Wesley Jan. 1 - Apr. 30, 1744: London to Newcastle 1
Charles Wesley Sept. 2 - Dec. 31, 1746: The Midlands and the North-East 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Blaydon 4 2
Chopwell 0 2
Greenside 0 1
Dukes Hagg 0 2
Winlaton 0 2
Lintz Green 0 2
Ryton 1 4
Gibside 0 2
Crawbrook 0 2
Burnopfield 0 2
Hedley 0 3
Stella 0 2
Medomsley 0 2
Collierley 0 2
Prudhoe 3 3
Ebchester 1 2
Tanfield 5 2
Wylam 0 2
Dipton 0 2
Mickley 0 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for High Spen. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
HIGH SPEN COLLIERY John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
SPEN Charles Wesley The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1849).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.