Chester-le-Street is a market town in the Chester-le-Street District of
County Durham, England which lies on the river Wear roughly eight miles west of Sunderland and six miles north of the city of Durham.
It once lay on the Roman north road that led from Newcastle Upon Tyne to Durham where the Romans built a fort known as Congangium around about the time that they built Hadrian's Wall. It became known to the Anglo-Saxons under the name of Cunecastre and became the seat of a bishopric in 882, when the monks of Lindisfarne settled there after fleeing their home as a result of Viking raids. The monks brought with them the remains of St Cuthbert and they remained there until 999 when further Viking raids persuaded them to move to Durham.
In the nineteenth century a number of collieries and iron-works opened in the neighbourhood but all the coal mines and factories have now closed and Chester-le-Street is now classed as a quiet dormitory town, with a population of around 22,500. There is an outdoor market which is held weekly on every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday and the town features the Riverside ground of the Durham County Cricket Club.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica adds that;
The parish church of St Mary and St Cuthbert is an interesting building, formerly collegiate, with a tower 156 ft. high, and a remarkable series of monumental tombs of the Lumley family, collected here from Durham cathedral and various ruined monasteries, and in some cases remade. About 1 mile along the river is Lumley Castle, the seat of the earl of Scarborough, and about 2 miles north lies Lambton Castle, the residence of the earl of Durham, built in 1797 on the site of the old House of Harraton.
38.1911encyclopedia.org/C/CH/CHESTER_LE_STREET.htm
www.chester-le-streetrotary.co.uk/townhistory.html
www.thenortheast.fsnet.co.uk/Chester-le-StreetandWashington.htm