Chopwell is a village in the
Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead
The Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England. It includes Gateshead, Rowlands Gill, Whickham, Blaydon, Ryton, Felling, Pelaw, Dunston and Low Fell. The boroug ...
,
Tyne and Wear
Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newcastl ...
, England, west of
Rowlands Gill
Rowlands Gill is a town situated along the A694, between Winlaton Mill and Hamsterley Mill, on the north bank of the River Derwent, in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Within Gateshead's greenbelt, the town has a p ...
and north of
Hamsterley. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 9,395.
In 1150,
Bishop Pudsey granted the Manor of Chopwell to the first Abbot of Newminster.
Newminster Abbey
Newminster Abbey was a Cistercian abbey in Northumberland in the north of England. The site is protected by Grade II listed building and Scheduled Ancient Monument status.
Ranulph de Merlay, lord of Morpeth, and his wife, Juliana, daughter of ...
retained possession of the manor until the
dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536.
Traditionally an area of
coal mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
, Chopwell was nicknamed "
Little Moscow
Little Moscow was a term for towns and villages in capitalist societies whose population appeared to hold extreme left-wing political values or communist views. The places so named were typically in working class areas, normally with strong trade ...
" because of the strong support for the
Communist Party. Chopwell counts "Marx Terrace" (after
Karl Marx) and "Lenin Terrace" (after
Vladimir Lenin) among its street names, and during the
1926 General Strike
The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a general strike that lasted nine days, from 4 to 12 May 1926. It was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British governm ...
the
Union Flag at the council offices was taken down and replaced with the
Soviet flag. Another notable street, site of the former Chopwell Junior School, "Fannybush Lane", was renamed "Whittonstall Road" by the local authority in the 1990s after its street sign was repeatedly stolen.
In 1974, Chopwell became part of the
metropolitan county
The metropolitan counties are a type of county-level administrative division of England. There are six metropolitan counties, which each cover large urban areas, with populations between 1 and 3 million. They were created in 1974 and are each di ...
of
Tyne and Wear
Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newcastl ...
and the
metropolitan borough of Gateshead
The Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England. It includes Gateshead, Rowlands Gill, Whickham, Blaydon, Ryton, Felling, Pelaw, Dunston and Low Fell. The boroug ...
, after previously being part of the
administrative county of Durham.
See also
*
Chopwell Colliery
Chopwell Colliery was a coal mine situated at Chopwell, in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. The pit was first sunk in 1781, and was closed on 25 November 1966. The colliery was bought by the Consett Iron Company in 1896, before being handed over to the ...
References
External links
Villages in Tyne and Wear
Communism in the United Kingdom
Gateshead
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