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, Newcastle u ...

, 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 ...

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 ...

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 fro ...

, 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 A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

. Chopwell counts "Marx Terrace" (after

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

) and "Lenin Terrace" (after

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

) 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 governme ...

the

Union Flag The Union Jack, or Union Flag, is the ''de facto'' national flag of the United Kingdom. Although no law has been passed making the Union Flag the official national flag of the United Kingdom, it has effectively become such through precedent. ...

at the council offices was taken down and replaced with the

Soviet flag The State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (), commonly known as the Soviet flag (), was the official state flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 to 1991. The flag's design and symbolism are derived from ...

. 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 ...

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 An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, and in Ireland from 1899 until either 1973 (in Northern Ireland) or 2002 (in the Republic of Ireland). They are now abolished, although mos ...

of Durham.

References

External links

Villages in Tyne and Wear Communism in the United Kingdom Gateshead {{TyneandWear-geo-stub

See also

References

External links