Description
Cocken, a township in West Rainton parish, Durham, on the river Wear, 3 1/2 miles NNE of Durham, and 1 from Leamside station on the N.E.R. Acreage, 465 ; population, 176. Post town, Fence Houses; money order and telegraph office, West Rainton. There is a coal mine. Cocken Hall, now the seat of the Heath family, formerly a Carmelite nunnery, is a romantically situated residence, almost surrounded by the Wear, over which a bridge has been recently built to supersede a rather dangerous ford. Mrs Mompesson, the heroic wife of the rector of Eyam during the Great Plague, was born here.
Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5
