In the 19th Century, the Durham suburbs of Crossgate Moor and Neville's Cross were barely big enough to be called villages. There were no more than 30 to 40 households in each place by 1881.

Crossgate Moor consisted of two terraces and a few other scattered houses near to where Durham Johnston School now stands.

Its population included 11 coke workers, two miners, four stonemasons, three joiners, four general labourers, three laundry workers and three print compositors. There was also a butcher, wood keeper, cartman, shoemaker and dressmaker.

Coke workers probably worked at collieries near the River Browney, but the joiners and masons worked for William Rutter, a builder of Rose Villa.

At number 8 Neville Terrace lived John Simpson, one of three noted mustard manufacturers in Durham.

Neville's Cross, the older and more southerly of the two suburbs, grew around the junction where Neville's Cross traffic lights now stand. Here, the A690 changes from Crossgate Peth into Neville's Cross Bank as it descends towards the Browney, while the Great North Road (A167) changes its name from Darlington Road to Newcastle Road as it heads north.

Until the 1960s, the junction was not a crossroads but a dogleg, where travellers from Darlington made an awkward right turn up Neville's Cross Bank for 100 yards before turning left to continue north.

The left turn is now St John's Road, a quiet street terminating in a cul-de-sac at Redhills railway cutting where a bridge once crossed the line.

The street includes an intriguing stone house of 1902, built as a shop and warehouse, but later serving as a wartime fire station and church hall.

Built by an architect called Forster, it incorporates stones from Durham's demolished racecourse grandstand.

The medieval stump of Neville's Cross overlooks the A690 near the junction with St John's Road, close to where a tollhouse once stood. Shown on the 1850s map and depicted in an early 19th Century drawing, the tollhouse was later removed.

The cross itself was here before the 14th Century battle with which it is often associated, and is now caged-in with iron railings. We will feature the battle in a future column.

Across the A690 is St John's Church, built as a mission church in the late 19th Century and just east is the upper entrance to The Avenue where the 19th Century villas, such as Farnley Towers, belonged to Durham's Victorian businessmen.

The villas represent late 19th Century development at Neville's Cross but earlier developments were to the west of the present traffic lights.

Here there were three terraces by the mid-19th Century. Two remain, namely Alma Terrace on the western side of Neville's Cross Bank and an opposing terrace that incorporates the old coaching inn of Neville's Cross Hotel that is now a restaurant.

Neville's Cross Primary School of 1908 stands near Alma Terrace and a Methodist church and co-operative store of the same era once stood close by. Only the old co-operative laundry buildings remain and are now operated by the firm of Sunlight. A third terrace stood on the eastern side of Darlington Road, below what is now Geoffrey Avenue, but it was demolished in the 1960s. Other terraces, such as Prospect Terrace on the bank and Cross View Terrace, in Darlington Road, came later in the 19th Century but one building, now occupied by a motorcycle garage, is distinctly 1920s.

In the 1881 census, there were four people employed in making clothes at Neville's Cross, three railwaymen, seven labourers, a blacksmith, publican, iron moulder, cartwright, gamekeeper and millwright. However, most significant were the papermakers.

Eleven papermakers resided at Neville's Cross and a further six at Crossgate Moor. They were employed in paper mills west of Durham along the River Browney where four separate paper mills were established in the late 1700s at Stonebridge, Langley, Relly and Moorsley Banks.

Moorlsey Banks was the most northerly. Situated on the Browney, off Toll House Road, near Crossgate Moor, its history is sketchy, but was probably established by the Ord family in the late 18th Century.

By 1851, Anwick Smith and sons owned the mill, but it subsequently passed to John Davison in the 1860s and then to John Binns in the 1870s.

The Binns family moved here from Lancashire, but Mr Binns later committed suicide. By 1881, his widow, Ellen, resided at Tenter House, near Durham's St Godric's church, and continued running the business with the assistance of a manager. She employed 14 men, two boys, four women and four girls at the mill. Most lived in Neville's Cross or Crossgate Moor. The mill, which was powered by water with a sluice gate and millrace connected to the Browney, ceased operating at the end of the 19th Century.

Just east of the mill site is a small wooded copse alongside Toll House Road that marks the site of the first Pot and Glass Inn. First shown on the 1830s tithe map, but in existence long before, it was no doubt popular with paper workers. The pub closed about 1938 when its licence transferred to a new establishment called the Neville Dene, in the Great North Road. The Neville Dene stood close to the site of an earlier pub called The Three Tuns that appears on the 1850s map.

Another tollgate, this time Redhills Tollgate stood near this pub but both pub and toll have long since gone. However, the Neville Dene remains and has been known as the Pot and Glass for many years. The building that housed the original Pot and Glass was demolished in 1950.

More Crossgate Moor and Neville's Cross next week.