[2][3] The earliest known record of the town is to be found in Reginald of Durham's Life of Godric where it is stated that the saint lived there for almost two years about 1120 AD with Elric the hermit.

The bishop and his friends indulged in hawking, but hunting for red deer in the parks of Wolsingham and Stanhope was their principal pastime.

They are said to have been converted from the former Pack Horse Inn where Edward III may have rested on returning from his unfruitful encounter with the Scots in Weardale in April 1327.

A memorial to the Roman Catholic priest John Duckett marks the spot where he was arrested before being taken to Tyburn in London, where he was executed in 1644.

The trees surrounding the field leading from the historical Bell Tower have names and were planted by the Head Teacher for each of the pupils of the school that had fallen during the war.

John Wesley, cofounder of the Methodist Church, made many visits to Weardale and preached in Wolsingham several times between 1764 and 1790 from a rough stone pulpit at the rear of Whitfield House.

This was the regional sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis, but by the early 1960s there were so few cases that it was virtually redundant although the open verandah rooms were still in use.

Wolsingham is served by the heritage Weardale Railway, which runs to Stanhope, including special steam services.

After much work and investment by new American owners, the heritage railway reopened in 2010 with a special train event running direct from London Kings Cross.

The Weardale Railway also used to transport up to 150,000 tonnes of high-quality coking coal per year from the Park Wall North surface mine 4 miles away using a new transload facility in Wolsingham, which opened in 2011.

There was strong local opposition to the coal depot but planning permission was finally approved as the lorries avoid the town.

Wolsingham has two schools: Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North East and Cumbria and ITV Tyne Tees.