Leadgate 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. It is situated to the north-east of

Consett Consett is a town in County Durham, England, about south-west of Newcastle upon Tyne. It had a population of 27,394 in 2001 and an estimate of 25,812 in 2019. History Consett sits high on the edge of the Pennines. Its' name originates in the ...

. The Roman road Dere Street runs straight through the middle of Leadgate, today this is known as Durham Road and the B6309. The place-name 'Leadgate' is first attested in 1590 and derives from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

'hlidgeat', which means 'swing-gate'. The parish church of St Ives was built in 1865–68. The Roman Catholic church of Our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph lies a little way out of the village at Brooms. It was built 1866-69 by

E. W. Pugin Edward Welby Pugin (11 March 1834 – 5 June 1875) was an English architect, the eldest son of architect Augustus Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and Louisa Barton and part of the Pugin & Pugin family of church architects. His father was ...

and served the Irish migrant community. Leadgate was the home of the workers and staff of the Eden colliery which opened in 1844, and was closed on the 18 July 1980. It was also home to many working for the Consett Iron Company (about 2 miles away) and which closed in the 1980s. Leadgate now stands as a small village with a close-knit community. Plans to regenerate the area have been on the local councils' planning board for some time and improvements are being made. The retail economy of Leadgate is centered on Front Street which until the construction of the Leadgate bypass formed one of the main routes from Newcastle into Consett. Front Street hosts a number of independent businesses as well as a local co-operative. The coast-to-coast cycle route runs through Leadgate and follows the path of the former Stanhope and Tyne railway. The last train ran on the line on 17 March 1984. St Ives is the Parish Church. On 17 August 2020 the Bradley open-cast mine, the last coal mine in England, was closed.

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* * Villages in County Durham Consett {{Durham-geo-stub