Fencehouses

Fencehouses
County Durham
Location
Grid reference:	NZ321499
Location:	54°50’35"N, 1°30’0"W
Data
Post town:	Houghton Le Spring
Postcode:	DH4
Dialling code:	0191
Local Government
Council:	Sunderland Durham
Parliamentary constituency:	Houghton and Sunderland South

Fencehouses, or 'Fence Houses', is a small village within the parish of Houghton-le-Spring in County Durham.

The village was created when Napoleonic prisoners were housed on the outskirts of Houghton-le-Spring. The prisoners were used as labour to cut a path through the hill at Houghton-le-Spring to provide a road for soldiers to march from Durham to the coast at Sunderland. The route they made, known as Houghton Cut, has since been expanded to carry a 4-lane road, the A690.

Name

Local legend insists that the French prisoners who built the road to Sunderland were held here in a place known as "The French Houses" and this later changed to "Fencehouses". This origin is highly debatable though.

An alternative theory, put forward by C.A. Smith MA, a historian from Houghton-le-Spring, appears in an article in the Official Houghton-le-Spring Urban District Handbook for 1962:

'Fence Houses derives its name from Biddick Fence which formed the southern boundary of South Biddick and included Burnmoor

The land was originally part of the Grange (a large local manor house). In about 1950, a modern housing estate was added to the village it, called the Grange estate.

A railway line was built, bringing a 2-platform station providing services to Sunderland, Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham, and a stock yard from which local farmers shipped their cattle by train. The station opened in 1836, and the Post Office two years later as a Railway Sorting Office. The line closed to passengers in May 1964, apart from a one-day service for the Durham Miners Gala that year.

In the 1960s, Fencehouses had the largest telephone exchange in the area (The Police house at Shiney Row, four miles away, had the number "Fencehouses 55" in the 1940s). In the 1980s the Fencehouses exchange numbers became the Durham exchange numbers.

Fencehouses was the terminus of a tram service from Sunderland and is now served by very few buses linking the village to Houghton le Spring, which is a few miles up the road.

The village is essentially a single main street cut in two by the path of the old railway line. Just near to the railway line and yards from the old station, is a new development of town houses and apartments called "the sidings".

Outside links

• The Fence Houses Website.
• The Story of Dubmire Junior School 1914 - 2002
• Historic photographs and Articles regarding Fence Houses