Hotels in Stanley

Stanley is a former coal-mining town on a hilltop in north County Durham, and its main draw for visitors sits just outside it: Beamish, the open-air museum that rebuilds North East life from the Georgian era to the mid-twentieth century, complete with a working colliery village and trams. Nearby are the Tanfield Railway, which claims to be the world's oldest operating railway, and Causey Arch, an early eighteenth-century railway bridge over a wooded gorge.

The town itself is no beauty. It is a post-industrial high street that has struggled since the pits closed, with little in the way of nightlife or dining. What it offers is position. With only a handful of hotels here, base yourself on the Beamish side of town if the museum is your reason for coming, as that keeps you closest to the attractions and the routes toward Durham and Newcastle.