Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for PAINSHAW, Penshaw, or Pensher

PAINSHAW, Penshaw, or Pensher, a village, atownship, and a chapelry, in Houghton-le-Spring parish, Durham. The village stands on an eminence, adjacent to a junction of the Sunderland and Durham railway with a line to South Shields and near the river Wear, 5¾ miles S W by W of Sunderland; takes its name from thewords Pen and Shaw, signifying "a hill" and "a wood; "consists of two parts, called Old Painshaw and New Painshaw; and has a station at the railway junction. The Victoria bridge takes the railway over the Wear, in the vicinity of the village; was erected in 1838, at a cost of about £35,000; and measures 710 feet in length, 21 feetin width, and 130 feet in height. The township comprises 1,066 acres. Real property, £7, 536; of which £1, 800 are in mines, and £1, 475 in quarries. Pop., 2,075. Houses, 426. Coal-works here belong to the Marchioness of Londonderry. An open Doric temple, 100 feet long, 53 feet wide, and 70 feet high, stands on Penshaw Hill; was erected in 1844-5, to the memory of the first Earl of Durham; and commands an extensive panoramic view. The chapelry is more extensive than the township, and was constituted in 1838, and reconstituted in 1846. Post-town, Fence-Houses. Pop. in 1861, 3, 537. Houses, 726. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Durham. Value, £380.* Patron, the Bishop of Manchester. The church was built in 1754. There are a Wesleyan chapel, and a recently erected parochial school. A section of the chapelry was constituted a separate charge in 1866; bears the name of Barnmoor; and is a p. curacy of thevalue of £200, in the patronage of alternately the Crown and the Bishop of Durham.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a village"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Houghton le Spring CP/AP       County Durham AncC
Place names: BARNMOOR     |     PAINSHAW     |     PAINSHAW PENSHAW OR PENSHER     |     PENSHAW     |     PENSHER
Place: Penshaw

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