It should come as no surprise that Britain's first privately owned nuclear power station will be built on Teesside in County Durham - the county has been at the forefront of innovation since Saxon times. Durham gave us the first pointed arch and stone vaulted ceiling, the first great literary work in England, the first English glass, the first family of the United States, the first railroad bridge and public railroad, the friction match, the electric light bulb and, something less usefully, the first congestion charge, a rare blight on otherwise glorious old Durham Town.
The city is known everywhere, the province less so, but it is a treasure trove. Less showy than its neighbors, Durham has a proud history as England's first and most enduring County Palatine, ruled since Norman times by a Prince Bishop with its own parliament, army, mint and courts until as recently as 1836.
The Prince Bishop's throne, built in the 14th century and said to be the highest in Christendom, still remains in Britain's most spectacular church. Few will forget their first glimpse of the majestic Durham Cathedral, which stands resplendent on a cliff above a loop of the River Wear, 'half church of God, half castle 'against the Scots', as Sir Walter Scott put it.
Founded in 995 to house the relics of St Cuthbert, a seventh-century Bishop of Lindisfarne, Durham Cathedral is considered perhaps the most beautiful Norman building in the world. The long, lofty nave with round arches and massive carved round pillars is breathtaking, while the roof of the nave is the earliest example of stone vaulting in the world and the first structure anywhere to use the pointed arch.
Buried in the cathedral, along with St. Cuthbert, is the Venerable Bede. Bede was born around 673 AD near Monkwearmouth, now part of Sunderland, and spent his early years in the monastery founded there in 674 AD by the Northumbrian monk Benedict Biscop. All that remains of the monastery is the largely rebuilt St. Peter's Church, although the lower part of the church tower, which now forms an arched veranda, comes from Biscop's original seventh-century building, the oldest surviving Saxon masonry in Great Britain -Britain. It is a chilling experience to touch the very same stones that Bede touched more than 1,300 years ago.
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Sadly, the first glass windows seen in England no longer survive at St. Peter's, made by glass workers imported by Biscop from France. Fittingly, by the 18th century, thanks to an abundance of high-quality sand and coal, Sunderland had become Britain's leading glass-making center - the National Glass Centre, near St. Peter's, tells the story.
The Venerable Bede eventually moved to a sister monastery built by Biscop, 10 miles north of the River Tyne, in what is now Jarrow. Here he wrote his celebrated Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the first major work written in England. St. Paul's monastic church was consecrated in 685 and the dedication stone - the oldest in Britain - still stands above the chancel arch, while a Saxon window in the south wall contains fragments of England's earliest colored glass.
Another son of Sunderland who went north, in his case to Gateshead, was Joseph Swan, who in the 1870s invented the electric light bulb, with which he lit his house, Underhill in Low Fell, Gateshead, the first house in the world that are illuminated by electric light. The house is now a retirement home, but retains some of Swan's original electrical fixtures and can be visited occasionally by appointment.
Washington Old Hall, the ancestral home of the first US president, dominates the village, now a suburb of Sunderland, from which the US capital takes its name. George Washington's ancestor William de Hartburn (of Hartburn in the south of the county) purchased the manor of Wessyngton in 1180 and changed his name to William de Wessyngton, later Washington. The Old Hall is now run by the National Trust and is popular with American visitors.
Along the Sunderland coast, right on a cliff top at Seaham, stands the Saxon Church of St. Mary the Virgin, dating from the seventh century and one of the ten oldest churches in England. The marriage register bears the signatures of Lord Byron and his bride Anne Isabella Milbanke, married on 2 January 1815 in the drawing room of the adjacent Seaham Hall, owned by Anne's father.
The marriage lasted just over a year, but the couple had a daughter, Ada, who grew up to be a brilliant mathematician and a friend of Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine, the first computer. Ada Lovelace proposed several applications for the machine and is therefore recognized as the first computer programmer.
Set in a circle of trees in the village of Escomb, just outside Bishop Auckland, stands England's oldest unaltered church. This simple, exquisite Saxon church was built around 675 AD using stones from a nearby Roman fort and also boasts England's oldest sundial. For those wishing to visit, the church key hangs outside the aptly named No 28 Saxon Green.
Rail enthusiasts will find plenty of interest in County Durham. A few miles west of Sunderland, hidden in a wooded valley, is Causey Arch, the world's first railway bridge, opened in 1726 to transport coal from the mines of Tanfield to the River Tyne. The bridge is the work of local stonemason Ralph Wood, who relied on what he knew about Roman technology, as no one had built anything so ambitious since Roman times.
Wood's first attempt failed and he was so convinced that this second attempt would also collapse that he threw himself off the bridge to his death. The bridge remained standing, the longest span in Britain for thirty years, carrying 900 carriages per day, drawn by horses along two wooden rails.
At the Locomotion Museum in Shildon you can see George Stephenson's Locomotion No 1, the steam engine that pulled the first passenger train on the world's first public railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, on September 27, 1825.
In Darlington you will find the Skerne Bridge, built in 1825 to carry the original railway line over the River Skerne and which still functions today. It is the oldest railway bridge in the world in continuous use and is now part of Darlington's Railway Heritage Quarter, which was constructed to celebrate the railway's bicentenary in 2025.
Stockton is home to the world's first train ticket office, a rather derelict brick building next to a junction, where the first train ticket was sold and which marks the spot where the first Stockton and Darlington railway line was built.
The ticket office is a stone's throw from Stockton's main street, the widest in Britain, where two years later, in 1827, John Walker invented the friction match in his pharmacy at No. 59. The shop is gone, but appropriately the site is now occupied by a Boots pharmacy and a plaque to Walker hangs outside.
For a county with such an impressive industrial heritage, Durham is not without its rural delights: 40 miles of historic coastline, wild moors, much of the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and England's highest waterfall, High Force, under which.
Time to leave - but Roger Whittaker was right: "Leaving will leave me feeling down".
Where to stay in County Durham
Seaham Hall, Seaham
Stay in the house where Lord Byron married. It is a luxurious Georgian mansion on a cliff top with beautiful sea views, a spa, two restaurants and comfortable rooms. Doubles from £284.
Forty Winks Guesthouse, Durham
A Victorian guest house situated on the banks of the River Wear, with spectacular views of Durham Cathedral and nine individually decorated bedrooms. Doubles from £160.
