page_title: County Durham
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: County Durham / History / Early administration / Overview
context_page_description: County Durham is a county in North East England. The county town is Durham, a cathedral city.
  County Durham can refer to the modern ceremonial county, the smaller area of a unitary authority, or the historic county with different boundaries. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is Darlington, closely followed by Hartlepool, Billingham and Stockton-on-Tees. It borders Tyne and Wear to the north-east, Northumberland to the north, Cumbria to the west and North Yorkshire to the south. The area of the unitary authority, Durham County Council, does not include Darlington, Hartlepool or Stockton-on-Tees. The historic county's boundaries stretch between the rivers Tyne and Tees, thus including places such as Gateshead, Jarrow, South Shields and Sunderland, but do not include the part of the modern county south of the Tees.
  During the Middle Ages, the county was an ecclesiastical centre, due largely to the presence of St Cuthbert's shrine in Durham Cathedral, and the extensive powers granted to the Bishop of Durham as ruler of the County Palatine of Durham.
context_section_description: The historic boundaries of County Durham included a main body covering the catchment of the Pennines in the west, the River Tees in the south, the North Sea in the east and the Rivers Tyne and Derwent in the north. The county palatinate also had a number of liberties: the Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire and Norhamshire exclaves within Northumberland, and the Craikshire exclave within the North Riding of Yorkshire. In 1831 the county covered an area of 679,530 acres (2,750.0 km²) and had a population of 253,910. These exclaves were included as part of the county for parliamentary electoral purposes until 1832, and for judicial and local-government purposes until the coming into force of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844, which merged most remaining exclaves with their surrounding county. The boundaries of the county proper remained in use for administrative and ceremonial purposes until the 1972 Local Government Act.
caption: The historic boundaries of the county shown in John Speed's map of the county in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, c. 1611. These boundaries remained in use for administrative purposes until the local government reforms starting in the 1960s. A depiction of the city of Durham is inset in the top right.
exif: {}