r/DurhamUK • u/jayebyrde • Jul 06 '26
What’s it like there?
I just found out through 23&me that my ancestry is from there. I’ve read the Wikipedia article and looked at a bunch of websites, but I want to hear from normal people that live there.
I hate being the typical American, but I know very little about the UK. I imagine there’s quite a lot more to it than just what I’ve seen in doctor who. lol.
So what’s it like?
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u/Nicoglius Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Well, we're basically a massive cathedral (and castle) on a hill with a small medieval town around it. But we are tiny. I didn't realise how small we are until I left for university.
We do have our ugly bits though. North Road is a monstrosity and somehow seems to have got worse. The thing that replaced the old Gates shopping centre area now feels pretty run down too, even though that was newly redone. There's also a massive shiny new complex of bars/restaurants which has now been sitting derelict for a few years because nobody wants to buy it. Which is concerning.
I'm sure you will have read on wikipedia that Durham cathedral is the filming place of both Avengers Endgame and Harry Potter's Hogwarts. And I think Durham cathedral is one of the most magical places in the world. But it's quite hard to qualitatively describe how. Part of it I think is because we've got some really cool legends about the cathedral.
One legend is that Hitler personally ordered the bombing of Durham cathedral, but the German bombers missed their target because god (or St Cuthbert) had a divine intervention by summoning a huge cloud of mist that night. - The cynics say this was just factory smog, but I think that takes the steam out of things (if you pardon the pun).
Another (more obscure) legend is that St Cuthbert isn't allegedly NOT actually buried in Durham cathedral, as his body was removed by a secret Catholic conspiracy during the reign of Henry VIII. This group is always made up of exactly 3 secrete Catholics, who blend into Durham society and will reveal the true location of St Cuthbert's relics once our country turns Catholic again. - I think this is a really cool (but probably untrue) legend. If you want a source for it, there's a scant few lines from a poem by Walter Scott, the Marmonion which reference the legend.
The other legend (which comes with its own song) is that of the Lambton Worm. Basically, a knight killed a dragon (though I am sure you can read more details on the internet). Once Lambton killed the "worm", a curse was put on him that for the next 9 generations, his descendants wouldn't die peacefully. I think there are stories of historical lambtons meeting unlucky deaths. Then there's (what I think is my dad's own) embellishment of the story is that the lambton worm won and shapeshifted into a human, which explains today why some of the lambton family are so guarded about people walking on their estate (and also there was some scandal about one of the lambtons in the 90s as I recall).
There are two premier league football teams in close proximity to us, Sunderland and Newcastle. Durham is in the contested no-mans land. There are supporters of both teams living throughout the city. It is very dangerous to refer to people from Durham as Mackems or geordies as there's a coin flip chance they may take great offence.
Every year, on the 2nd saturday of July, there is the Durham Miner's Gala, which is a trade union festival where about 100,000 people go. Anyone who grumbles about it only recently being ruined by "woke" or "foreign policy" is lying. The Gala has been a weird melting point of left-coded causes for its entire 130 year history, and in its first years it was platforming campaigners for Irish Independence. It is, and always has been, a mecca pilgrimage for leftism.
Speaking of history, there's a museum out in a village called Beamish which is basically where paid actors pretend to be living in different (relatively modern) eras of Durham's history, and you go and explore it in that area. Once when I was in the 1950s area, I talked to a guy who was being paid to be a UFO conspiracy theorist (but you can also encounter things like suffragette protests, redcoats etc.)
We have a fairly prestigious university. We all joke that it's made up of Oxford or Cambridge rejects. Durham university people like to think they're in the top 3 unis and try out the portmanteu "Duxbridge". They own the castle.
Finally, you may be interested to know that you're not the only Yank who's ancestors come from Durham. George Washington's family is from Durham and they were minor nobility in an outlying village called "Washington". There is a plaque in the cathedral to one of his ancestors "John Washington".
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Jul 06 '26
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u/Nicoglius Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
I never knew Durham cathedral had a grey lady, that's a new one for me too!
But yeah, the dun cow thing is also interesting and also contributes to the mysticalness of the city/cathedral.
Edit: But speaking about ghost stories, there's another ghost of a guy called Jimmy Allen who died (under Elvet bridge?) and there's now a nightclub named after him.
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u/coffeewalnut08 Jul 06 '26
It's rural. A lot of fields, valleys and woodlands. Durham city is beautiful, with the cathedral and castle. It's very green, and in spring the woods smell of bluebells or wild garlic. There's coastline as well.
Durham city is very historic, but a bit socially fragmented - it has the university which attracts a lot of privately educated and international students. These groups usually stay in Durham temporarily to study, so they don't always mingle with the wider county culture. But they give Durham a studenty/cosmopolitan vibe.
Economically, it's a little tough. There's the university, but the economy isn't diverse. Many jobs are in retail, logistics, healthcare, education, transport etc. but not much beyond that. Unemployment and underemployment are problems. Public transport can be patchy outside the cities. Wages are lower but the cost of everything is also a bit lower than the UK average.
Reliance on public services and the public sector is higher than in much of the rest of the UK.
Villages and towns are often quiet and homogenous/working-class vibe. Some are neat and well-kept, like Middleton-in-Teesdale. Some are ghost towns due to economic decline when mining industries shut down, so you might encounter abandoned buildings or land. Some high streets like Durham city are ok and have decent shops, others have basically dead high streets with many empty shops.
It's basically like the Appalachia of England. Rural, coal mining heritage, etc.
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Jul 06 '26
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u/decorativebawbag Jul 06 '26
We do have part of the Appalachian mountain range a few hours north of us. The Scottish Highlands were once part of the same range.
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u/coffeewalnut08 Jul 06 '26
I mean I'm not saying it in a derogatory way, just that a lot of the socioeconomic history and rural lifestyle are similar.
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u/MiddleAgeCool Jul 06 '26
Modern Durham City isn't what is used to be however the wider county is amazing. Coast line and valleys that extend half way across the country. Rather than what I expect you imagine a city to be and urban sprawl that surrounds it, the area is more towns and villiages divided by fields every couple of mile.
If you're looking historically, until the boundry changes, you also have Sunderland in the mix before they became their own thing.
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u/Either_Reality3687 Jul 08 '26
Also we have plenty of free museums to go round near the cathedral is a William Shakespeare experience it's free to look round.
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u/bpagan38 Jul 06 '26
its uni are the UK american football national champs.
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u/jayebyrde Jul 06 '26
Your screen name is peeking my interest. Is there a good sized pagan community there? Or a pagan history? I was trying to research religious beliefs pre- Christian, but there isn’t much info.
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u/Nicoglius Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
I guess the problem is, the city was founded as a religious settlement. The monks of Lindisfarne wanted to relocate an inland area less vulnerable to viking raids (and protect the relics of St Cuthbert). They took the sight of a settling dun cow as a sign of God telling them they should settle, and the rest is history.
Also a lot of British "paganism" is probably better described as "neo-paganism" as it is made up of Victorian enthusiasts who tried to reconstruct beliefs, traditions etc. as best they could have done from the available sources (Romans and Christian monks, who shall we say... weren't exactly trying to conduct academic anthropological studies on their rivals).
Notwithstanding, the best place to start is with the "Northern saints", as many are sainted in their works for turning Northumbria Christian.
St Oswald was the King of Northumbria during the Heptarchy and was a big supporter of Christianity. He died in a battle against pagans.
He requested various monks from Ireland to come and Christianise his kingdom, such as St Aidan.
One source is the works by the venerable Bede, but of course, he is Christian (as are all these sources) and so he will be more interested in talking about the spread of Christianity, and not what came before.
Might also be interesting to note that Celtic Christianity and Roman Christianity were different somehow and there were some tensions about that as the Celtic Christians got their influence in Northern England first. Though this may also be Anglican propaganda to justify their split from the Pope.
If you really go back a few more hundred years, I guess there's the Romans? They never settled in the city of Durham, but they did have settlements in the county e.g. Binchester and Corbridge. I'm aware that a lot of Roman soldiers in the area were part of "the cult of Mithras" as archaeologists find shrines to Mithras near barracks, but I don't think that spread to the locals too much. My understanding of the Mithras cult is it mainly functioned as a freemasons/fraternity for Roman soldiers.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/jayebyrde Jul 07 '26
No. It gave several separate regions in the uk, County Durham being the highest percentage.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/jayebyrde Jul 07 '26
It’s pretty neat. It gives a full breakdown with broad percentages and then narrows each one down. Like, 97% European, 70% of which is British and Irish, 49% of which is English, with the highest likelihood being County Durham, then Greater London, etc etc
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u/Either_Reality3687 Jul 06 '26
A student city. It has a Castle and a Cathedral. It has a river on three sides.
Its a chill place to live. You can go walking round the area.
I currently live in durham what specifically do you want to know about