Evenwood, Cockfield & Staindrop

Evenwood, Cockfield and Staindrop form a cluster of settlements in County Durham where farmland, village streets and former industrial sites meet. Evenwood carries a clear mining legacy: rows of former miners' cottages and reclaimed spoil tips sit alongside council housing and small workshops. Cockfield Fell rises above the surrounding land as an open common; the ground there shows medieval ridge-and-furrow patterns and scattered quarry scars that reflect centuries of grazing and small-scale extraction. Narrow lanes thread between fields and hedgerows, linking farms, allotments and the occasional pond.

Staindrop is the area’s principal village, arranged along a long main street with a parish church and a compact mix of shops, a school and community halls. Public footpaths and quiet lanes provide access to walled pastures and stone barns, and streams cross the low ground in shallow valleys. Local life still turns on village facilities, agricultural timetables and seasonal work on the surrounding estates, while the pattern of field boundaries and dry stone walls records how land use has evolved here.