HAMSTEELS is an ecclesiastical parish, formed out of Esh parish, Oct. 3, 1873, and situated 2 ¼ miles east from Lanchester and 7 west from Durham, in the North Western division of the county, west division of Chester ward, Lanchester, petty sessional division and union, Durham county court district, rural deanery, archdeaconry and diocese of Durham. The ecclesiastical parish embraces the colliery villages of Quebec, Cornsay Colliery and Biggen. The church of St. John the Baptist, situated at Quebec, and consecrated in 1875, is a small building of stone, consisting of nave, west porch and a turret containing one bell: there are 240 sittings. The living is a vicarage, yearly value £300, in the gift of the Crown and the Bishop of Durham alternately, and held since 1874 by the Rev. Francis Gwynne Wesley M.A. of All Souls College, Oxford. There are Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist chapels, the former seating 200 persons, and a Methodist New Connexion chapel at Cornsay Colliery, with sittings for 150 persons. There are some stone quarries. The principal landowners are the Earl of Durham, lord-lieutenant, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, George Garry Taylor-Smith esq. and Sir Charles Frederick Smythe K.C.M.G.

The soil is light, and the subsoil rocky; a great portion of the township is barren and uncultivated. The population in 1881 was 4,313.

Schools

British, Cornsay Colliery (mixed), built in 1876, for 500 children; average attendance, 485.

Church of England, Quebec (mixed), built in 1874, for 230 children; average attendance, 210.

Catholic (mixed), built in 1874, for 200 children; average attendance, 195.