Washington, Tyne and Wear - History - Building The New Town

Building The New Town

Washington's design was developed through the New Towns concept aiming to achieve sustainable socio-economic growth. The new town is divided into small self-sufficient "villages". It was originally also divided into the 15 original numbered districts, a fate which confused many visitors to the area. These numbered districts have gradually been removed as well as increased, and now road signs indicate the villages' names instead of district number.

Washington's villages are called:

• Donwell
• Usworth (originally Great Usworth)
• Concord
• Sulgrave
• Albany
• Glebe
• Barmston
• Biddick
• Washington Village (the original village and location of the Old Hall)
• Columbia
• Blackfell
• Oxclose
• Ayton
• Lambton
• Fatfield
• Harraton
• Rickleton

Mount Pleasant was also added to the list of numbered districts (14), despite being out of the Town "boundary line" of the River Wear and having a DH4 Postcode (Houghton le Spring) it does hold a Washington dialing code starting 0191 415, 416 and 417.

Built on industry, Washington contains several industrial estates, named after famous local engineers, such as Parsons, Armstrong, Stephenson, Crowther, Pattinson, Swan and Emerson.

A lot of the land which makes up the town was purchased from the Lambton family, Earls of Durham who own the estate of the same name, which includes their ancestral home, Lambton Castle.

In 1970, Washington hosted the English Schools Athletic Association (ESAA) annual National Championships, attended by the then Lord Lieutenant of County Durham.

On 15 November 1977, the very first SavaCentre hypermarket (a venture between Sainsbury's and British Home Stores) opened at The Gallaries. By 2005, however, it had been rebranded as a traditional Sainsbury's as the SavaCentre brand was phased out.