High Spen is an old mining village in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, historically part of County Durham. First recorded in 1379 as a small hamlet called ‘Spen’, the settlement grew in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries with the growth of coal mining in the region. In a modern post-industrial North East England, High Spen functions as a commuter village in the Tyneside greenbelt with 1,935 people calling the village home