For 22 years businesswoman Diane Wright has cherished a dream of opening a tearoom celebrating the life and culture of the County Durham dale where she and her family have lived for five generations.

This week that dream became a reality with the first teas being served up by waitresses in black dresses and white pinafores in a building that dates back to 1670.

Hanging on the walls of the tearoom in Front Street, Stanhope, are photographs and paintings illustrating every village and hamlet in Weardale.

In pride of place are old photographs of Stanhope Silver Band with which Mrs Wright and her mother, Joan Woodhall, have had close family ties since it was founded 182 years ago.

"The idea," said Mrs Wright, "is to turn back the pages of history here in the dale. We will be serving up cream teas in the traditional way with china cups on linen tablecloths and even three-tier cake stands - the way they used to do it, in style.

"Life can be so hectic these days. We hope that people will find it a haven for peaceful reflection."

Next door to the tearoom, the Woodhalls will carry on with their fruit and veg shop, which is the oldest business in Stanhope.

It has taken ten months of careful planning by Mrs Wright to put together what she describes as "a very old fashioned tearoom."

She has even managed to buy a cast-iron Victorian stove, which will be used for baking potatoes and scones. She first saw one at Beamish Museum.

Importantly, the tearoom will help create seven more jobs in Weardale, which is striving to create a strong tourist economy.

But Mrs Wright admits to being "very, very proud" to have enlisted the services of pensioner Freda Bulman, recently retired from the Dales Centre at Stanhope and renowned as a cook with the Women's Institutes and agricultural shows throughout the North.

Mrs Bulman, who will be baking her renowned cheese and fruit scones, said: "I am thrilled to be in at the start of something that is essentially Weardale."