Geography and History
Teesdale's principal town is Barnard Castle, a historical market town that houses the largest single population in Teesdale as well as the renowned Bowes Museum. It also includes the small town of Middleton-in-Teesdale and a number of villages, including Mickleton, Eggleston, Romaldkirk, and Cotherstone. Middleton-in-Teesdale was a lead-mining centre, and plentiful traces of this industry can be seen round the adjoining slopes and side-valleys. On the South side of Teesdale looms the Bronze Age burial site of Kirkcarrion.
Over ledges in the Whin sill fall the famous waterfalls of High Force and Low Force and the cataract of Cauldron Snout.
Teesdale gave its name to the former Teesdale district of County Durham, although the south side of Teesdale lies within the historic county boundaries of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Formerly the Startforth Rural District, it was transferred to County Durham for administrative and ceremonial purposes on 1 April 1974, under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972. All of Teesdale lies within the parliamentary constituency of Bishop Auckland (Co. Durham).
The River Tees flows through Teesdale before reaching and passing between Barnard Castle and Startforth, thereafter passing to the south of Darlington, reaching the North Sea south of Hartlepool after passing Stockton-on-Tees and Middlesbrough. Running roughly parallel to Teesdale to the north is Weardale.
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“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)