Brave New Row

A SUNDAY stroll ends serendipitously in Oakenshaw, a village not visited since the regally- named Henry Tudor was secretary of the workmen’s club, getting on a quarter of a century ago. Good bloke, Henry.

Back then, Oakenshaw was on its uppers. The pit was long exhausted, the school had closed in 1980 despite protests in the House of Commons, the last rites Church of the Good Shepherd was so cold in winter that the communion wine froze. The wafers didn’t freeze, of course. They were eaten by the mice.

It was one of 121 village communities condemned in the 1960s by Durham County Council. Category D they called it, and the D stood unequivocally for death. Single Row had gone, Double Row (doon which wor Geordie lost his penker) awaited the bulldozers amid a melancholy sea of clarts. The Colliery Inn had closed in 1962, the redundancy hearing told that the village population was 668 of which 479 were, nominally at least, members of the workmen’s club. “It is a dying village,”

the hearing heard. “A steady decline is all that can be expected.”

Even when the death sentence was lifted in the mid-1970s, many villages were beyond resus or reprieve.

Oakenshaw is different. New Row and parts of School Row – numbers 142-153, it’s reckoned – share a reborn community with much more recent arrivals like South Acre, Woodlands Close and Acorn Drive.

They are not clagged together, as might have been said down the pit.

They are grafted, and the graft appears to be taking.

The contrast with Warrenby, featured in last week’s column, is unavoidable.

No less attractively set, Warrenby – a former ironworks village near Redcar – died, and decomposes yet, from municipal myopia.

Oakenshaw, atop a ridge, is reborn because someone stood there and opened his eyes. The vision coruscates: There can be few more joyous places.

IT’S a mile or so above Willington, seven miles southwest of Durham, half way to paradise. The bus from Bishop gets that far, and no further, several times a day.

For getting on 100 years it was a colliery village, a pit said to have had no disasters – an official “disaster” is when five or more are killed at the same time – but where 43 men and boys died, nonetheless.

One poor lad, just 16, was killed when run over by a set of tubs. He already had a wooden leg from a previous accident.

Now part of the colliery site is a nature reserve, woodland walks (with wild rasps) wend from the other side of the road. Oakenshaw, in truth, has developed so many ecofriendships that there’s even a poster on a lamppost about green dog walkers.

Whether it is the dogs or their masters who display such luminosity is, sadly, not explained.

There are well-kept allotments, a playground, a proper little kids’ football pitch, multi-use games area – the ubiquitous MUGA – on which that very Sunday afternoon the community association had organised sports coaching.

The views are lovely, the peace almost tangible, the pleasure of re-acquaintance immense.

AT the heart of it all are the 64 former colliery houses of New Row, if not now the longest continuous terrace in the former County Palatine then certainly among the medallists.

Fifty years ago, it’s recalled, the Coal Board offered New Row houses at £50 a apiece, so long as someone bought the lot. There weren’t any takers. Now there are New Row houses on the market for more than £100,000, though one or two are on offer for less than half that – hedged about not just by privet but by euphemisma estateagentsia. “In need of modernisation programme,” say the ads.

Most are delightful, manifestly cared for, full of individuality. Leek tranches are dug next to lobelia, potting sheds stand next to posh patio furniture. Several gardens fly the Union Jack or St George’s flag; one has the RAF standard, too.

Per ardua ad astra? It could be Oakenshaw’s watchword, too.

IF not exactly nouveau riche, New Row may be comfortably retired. Kate McNulty and her husband lived in Sunderland, agreed on a retirement home in west Durham, had never even heard of Oakenshaw. “We just put our names down with an estate agent in Crook,” she says.

“We lived right in the centre of Sunderland and only ever knew two neighbours to talk to. Even then, I couldn’t tell you what they did or where they went.

“Here everyone just stands and talks in the street. If I go across the allotment to water my tomatoes, I can be gone for an hour. The people are lovely.

“We just love the rural area, the friendliness. the quiet.

Before we came here, I was even frightened of sheep.”

Community association John Spencer, 40 years in Durham until retirement, hadn’t heard of the jewel on his doorstep, either. He lives in the newer houses – four bedroom semis from around £150,000 – attests to a seamless spirit.

All that may be problematical is that there is no focal point – not indoors, anyway. The Miners Welfare and the YMCA reading room are long gone, the shop and post office likewise, the workmen’s club closed and then burned down. Though Henry Tudor died, his widow remains in New Row.

It’s something the association’s been looking at, an anticipated wind turbine likely to generate significant additional income.

Compensations are ample. “We just walked around the nature reserve one day and thought what a wonderful place this could be. We’ve never regretted moving here for a moment,”

says John.

There’s a family fun day on Sunday, August 17. Several New Row homes are on the market – Reeds Rains, Robinsons and Venture among the agents. Get up there, tell them the column sent you: this is the village that came back gloriously from the grave.

SO back to Warrenby, which didn’t. Last week’s piece mentioned the shellfish factory but failed, says Eric Smallwood, to say that it’s the only place on Teesside where potted shrimps may be obtained. “They’re something like £1.80, frozen and sold in little tubs, but if you like potted shrimps – warned, and with a slice of brown bread and butter – they’re the biz.”

WE’D also noted that many of Warrenby’s streets were named after marsh birds – Wild Duck, Widgeon and so forth – but that there was also a Decoy Street, which was a cul-de-sac.

“A perhaps unique example of municipal Victorian humour,”

we supposed.

Eric Gendle, in Middlesbrough, sends, from the Cleveland Naturalists’ Field Club newsletter circa 1900, a piece succinctly headed “Coatham Marshes and the wild duck decoy which formerly existed there”.

The decoy was an elaborate affair of nets, trenches and screens. The decoyman, it was said, had been assisted by “a small fox-coloured dog” and had trained a few tame ducks to respond to a whistle and be fed with grain.

The wild ducks spotted a few morsels headed their way, followed the trail and were further fooled by the dog. “The whole business is conducted so quietly that the wildfowl in the main waters are never alarmed, the article insisted, though the RSPB today might have had something to say about it.

Sitting duck, the column returns next week.