This text is provided by Durham County Record Office

During the nineteenth century, as the population grew and industry expanded, new ad-hoc bodies grew up to cope with the resultant problems, such as the need for improved sanitation, clean water, medical services, care for the poor and old, and the registration of births, marriages and deaths. Each of these bodies was limited both in geographical area and in the powers which it possessed and no one body was responsible for the administration of the county as a whole, except the Court of Quarter Sessions. This body, consisting in the main of local gentry nominated by the Crown, met four times a year to try misdemeanours, refer more serious wrongdoers to the Court of Assizes and to oversee activities of the smaller administrative units of the county, including ecclesiastical parishes, poor law unions and rural and urban sanitary authorities.

The Quarter Sessions did not have merely a supervisory role: it also had responsibility for certain county-wide services such as the maintenance of county roads and bridges; the implementation of legislation designed to prevent the adulteration of food and drugs and to guarantee the accuracy of weights and measures; the maintenance of the county lunatic asylum and the administration of the county police force. These responsibilities were those with which the County Council began its life. The essential differences between the Quarter Sessions and the County Council were that the former had the power to try criminals and that the members of the latter were not nominated but elected. After 1889, the County Council assumed responsibility for the administration of the County and its duties quickly grew out of all recognition. The Court of Quarter Sessions had only judicial duties after 1889 and took no further part in the administration of the county.