‘ONCE the men and women who worked at Steetley’s quarry are gone, there will be no one who remembers that Coxhoe was an industrial village,” says Janice Young, of Coxhoe Local History Group.

“So we are hoping to attract people on our walk who may not even be aware that Coxhoe was once a coal mining area.”

Today, Coxhoe, conveniently beside the A1(M), thrives as a dormitory town for Durham and Newcastle, but it was born as a colliery village 170 years ago.

On Sunday, April 28, the Coxhoe group is leading a guided historical walk around the village and through the ages. It will look at the sites of an Iron Age settlement, a medieval village and Coxhoe Hall and mill, all of which come from the pre-industrial age.

The walk will also take in Coxhoe’s two railways, three collieries, ironworks, brickworks, quarries, potteries and 30 pubs.

All of the industry really began once the Clarence Railway had been extended from Ferryhill into Coxhoe in 1834, and the boring for coal – which had been going on for decades – began in earnest.

As the winnings opened up, the population exploded. In 1801, there had been 107 people living in Coxhoe; in 1841, there were 3,904.

But collieries were tough places to work, and colliery villages were tough places to live.

In 1849, William Bell, aged five, was run over and killed by a coal train while he was walking on the Joint Stock Coal Company’s railway. In 1852, Patrick Bargain, 11, a trapper boy, accidentally fell down the pitshaft and died. In 1870, four sinkers – Joseph Alderson, 29, William Carter, 20, John Huggins, 40, and Peter Lindsay, 34 – were dashed 70 fathoms to their deaths when the cage failed.

“The bodies of the poor fellows were found in a fearfully mutilated condition,” said The Northern Echo.

These, though, were accidents.

In 1845, Jonathon Hall, 15, died in a fight at the coalface.

He had been separated from Abraham Hutchinson after biting his nose, but Hutchinson returned with an iron bar which he smashed into Hall’s skull. Even the skills of the local surgeon couldn’t save him, and Hutchinson was sent to jail for manslaughter.

And in 1859, sinker Joseph Kyle, 20, died in a more joyous moment at the coalface. He was celebrating finding a new seam of coal in a time-honoured way of firing little gunpowder shots, or salutes, in the winning.

Unfortunately, when Joseph applied a candle to his homemade firework, it went off prematurely, blowing off a finger and thumb, and injuring him so severely he died three days later.

The Northern Echo: The chimney collapses
The chimney collapses

Not that life was any easier above ground. In 1867, cholera swept through the village, wiping out 50 people. A doctor found one victim lying dead on the floor of her hovel with a famished cat feeding on her arm. Her husband was alive – but he was asleep beside her, dead drunk having polished off the bottle of medicinal whisky that the doctor had prescribed.

Coxhoe’s collieries were all worked out by the 1880s – just four decades of coalmining.

But there were other industries, most notably the large limestone quarry which created agricultural lime for fertiliser from 1845.

In 1906, the quarry was taken over by the Steetley company, and it was discovered that when the stone was burnt at very high temperatures it produced “basic”, which was used to line Teesside’s blast furnaces between the wars.

There is still a street in Coxhoe called Basic Cottages, where the basic workers lived.

The Northern Echo: Coxhoe
A postcard view of Coxhoe in 1904

However, their quarry closed in 1966, although its landmark chimney lasted until 1981. When it came down, it marked the end of Coxhoe’s industrial era, although the local history group will be telling the stories of the era in next Sunday’s walk.

THE WALK

Meet 1.30pm, Sunday, April 28, at Coxhoe Village Green. The walk is a maximum of three miles, and is buggy and wheelchair-friendly. Some aspects of the walk may be challenging for older people and a basic level of fitness is required. There may also be some muddy areas when walking, dependent upon the weather at the time. Please bring appropriate clothing and footwear. It will finish at Coxhoe Village Hall for refreshments.