Byers Green is a village in

County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

, in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is situated to the north of

Bishop Auckland Bishop Auckland () is a market town and civil parish at the confluence of the River Wear and the River Gaunless in County Durham, northern England. It is northwest of Darlington and southwest of Durham. Much of the town's early history surro ...

, between Willington and

Spennymoor Spennymoor is a town and civil parish in County Durham (district), County Durham, England. It is south of the River Wear and is south of Durham, England, Durham. The civil parish includes the villages of Kirk Merrington, Middlestone Moor, Byers ...

, and a short distance from the

River Wear The River Wear (, ) in North East England rises in the Pennines and flows eastwards, mostly through County Durham to the North Sea in the City of Sunderland. At long, it is one of the region's longest rivers, wends in a steep valley through th ...

. Byers Green Hall has been the home of the Trotter family since the 15th century. Thomas Wright, (1711–1786) a famous 18th-century

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

, architect and mathematician was born and died here. Wright was educated in King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland before being apprenticed to a clockmaker in the town. By 1734, after various adventures, Wright had progressed to making a huge working model of the universe (an

orrery An orrery is a mechanical model of the Solar System that illustrates or predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons, usually according to the heliocentric model. It may also represent the relative sizes of these bodies; ...

) for an aristocratic London patron. This set him on his remarkable career that included the first accurate description of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...

. Professor

Harold Orton Harold Orton (23 October 1898 – 7 March 1975) was a British dialectologist and professor of English Language and Medieval Literature at the University of Leeds. Early life Orton was born in Byers Green, County Durham, on 23 October 1898 and w ...

, (1898–1975) a noted 20th-century linguist and English dialectologist was also born here. Harold Orton was the son of a schoolmaster at Byers Green and attended King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland followed by Merton College, Oxford. His 1933 book ''The Phonology of a South Durham Dialect'', based on the dialect of the area, was re-published by Routledge in 2015.Routledge page for ''The Phonology of a South Durham Dialect'' by Harold Orton
/ref> Sir

Percy Cradock Sir Percy Cradock (, 26 October 1923 – 22 January 2010) was a British diplomat, civil servant and sinologist who served as British Ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1983, playing a significant role in the Sino-British ...

, GCMG, (1923–2010) a senior British civil servant, was born in Byers Green. He was educated at Alderman Wraith Grammar School,

followed by

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

, where he read law. Having trained as a barrister Cradock joined the Diplomatic Service and during his career held a number of senior diplomatic posts, including

Ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Later in his career he was labelled by the media as the 'UK's most senior spy' because he chaired the

Joint Intelligence Committee (UK) The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) is an interagency deliberative body of the United Kingdom responsible for intelligence assessment, coordination, and oversight of the Secret Intelligence Service, Security Service, GCHQ, and Defence Intel ...

under Margaret Thatcher's government. Cradock died in London on 22 January 2010, aged 86. It is not known whether there was a village at Byers Green in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

period. The village name is quite late; it was first recorded in 1345 as Bires. It is probably the exact equivalent of the modern word 'byres'. The village name thus means '(the green by the) cowsheds'. Byers Green remained a farming area throughout the medieval period and into the 16th and 17th century. Most people would have worked on the land.

Transport

railway station was opened in 1837 by the

Clarence Railway The Clarence Railway was an early railway company that operated in north-east England between 1833 and 1853. The railway was built to take coal from mines in County Durham to ports on the River Tees and was a competitor to the Stockton and Darli ...

, after it opened its Byers Green branch from in 1837. From 1840 it became a junction station, between the Clarence and the West Durham Railway towards . Passenger services were withdrawn on 4 December 1939, when the passenger service from Ferryhill was cut back to . Goods were handled at Byers Green until 2 June 1958. Since the line was lifted in the late 1960s, the station buildings have been demolished, but the site is part of the Auckland County walking system

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in County Durham Spennymoor