The County Durham village which shaped Drag Race UK winner

The village that shaped Ginger Johnson

Lanchester is the childhood home of Ginger Johnson, the stage name of Donald Marshall, who won the fifth series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK in 2023 before going on to triumph in the 20th series of Celebrity MasterChef.

Marshall grew up in the village, attending a Catholic secondary school before studying scriptwriting at Newcastle University, where they came out as gay and began performing in drag.

Ginger’s journey into performance began in an unusual way, writing a radio play about the women of the North East they had grown up alongside in Lanchester.

When no actresses were available, they did the voiceover themself.

Ginger has described their drag persona as “a helium balloon in the shape of a woman,” and continues to reference their Lanchester roots as part of their identity as a performer.

A village built on Roman foundations

Long before Ginger’s fame, Lanchester’s history stretched back to the 2nd century AD, when the Romans built a fort here called Longovicium, a name derived from Brittonic and Old English elements roughly translating to ‘long fort’.

The fort covered almost six acres and housed around 1,000 foot soldiers and cavalry, sitting on Dere Street, the Roman road running north from York towards Hadrian’s Wall.

Stone from the fort was later repurposed to build All Saints’ Church, which still contains a Roman altar in its porch, one of several found in or around the old fort site.

The Romans even built a six-kilometre aqueduct to supply the fort, fed by a reservoir created using one of the oldest dams of its kind in the world.

Lanchester, County Durham. (Image: GOOGLE)

From mining village to visitor destination

Like much of County Durham, Lanchester’s more recent history was shaped by coal, with a small drift mine operating on the edge of the village until its closure in the 1970s.

Since then, the village has reinvented itself as a popular spot for walkers and day-trippers, with scenic routes through Dora’s Wood and Waters’ Meet, and a growing cluster of independent pubs, cafés, and shops including the King’s Head and Grandpa’s Fish Bar.

Other notable names from Lanchester

Ginger Johnson is far from the only notable figure to come from Lanchester.

The village was also home to archaeologist Canon William Greenwell, who invented the famous ‘Greenwell’s Glory’ fly-fishing fly, as well as his relative, poet Dorothy ‘Dora’ Greenwell.

Political journalist Anne McElvoy also went to school in the village.