n.
Administrative (pop., 2001: 493,470), geographic, and historic county, northeastern England.
Adjacent to the North Sea coast, it includes the city of Durham . The northern part of the county is cut by the valleys of the Rivers Wear and Tees; the Tees lowlands extend across the south. Under the Romans the region was a military outpost associated with Hadrian's Wall . Durham was later incorporated into the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria . It was unimportant economically until the 19th century, when exploitation of its coalfields, now exhausted, made it a key area of industrial growth in Britain. The area is now a centre of light industry.