Lanchester is a village and civil parish in County Durham, England, 8 miles west of Durham and 5 miles from Consett. It had a population at the 2011 Census of 4,054. Although there was a small drift mine on the edge of the village which closed in the 1970s, Lanchester's economy was mainly based on agriculture. It is now a residential village in which a number of housing estates have been developed since the late 1960s.