By Robert McManners and Gillian Wales

THE latest exhibition at Auckland Castle opened last night bringing together two seemingly unlikely bedfellows: the bishops of Durham and the county's coalminers.

The exhibition, entitled Pitmen and Prelates, is curated by Robert McManners and Gillian Wales and the staff of Auckland Castle, and it explains how the histories of these apparently disparate occupations are inextricably linked.

For example, the very first record of commercial coalmining in England is in 1183 in the Boldon Book, which is Bishop Hugh Pudsey’s inventory of lands north of the Humber. The Boldon Book surveyed the lands which had been omitted from the 1086 Doomsday Book, in which there was no mention of coalmining, and it recorded that coal was being mined at Escomb and was used by the "cart-smith" at Coundon to make ploughs for the Bishop’s farms.

The bishop was already very wealthy, with income from the multitudes of pilgrims to the shrines of Saxon saints, Cuthbert and Bede, but the confirmation of the status of "Prince Bishop" to Bishop William Walcher in 1071 brought a new and far reaching source of income. The Bishop now enjoyed unique status within his land, equivalent to that of the king, and he was allowed to claim mineral rights throughout the Palatine. Initially lead mining and later coal brought him huge wealth and direct contact with mineworkers.

In this exhibition, the relationships between six bishops and the miners are explored, each bishop reacting differently to his involvement with the industry; some were loved for their interventions but others loathed by the miners. These narratives are illustrated with both artefacts and through the powerful medium of mining art.

The phenomenon of mining art is not confined to the coal industry nor is it peculiar to this coalfield but it gave the miner a quiet but powerful voice and has been more extensively researched in the North-East than in any other region of the country.

Several extremely significant artworks are among those on show.

Henry Perlee Parker’s Pitmen at Play shows a group of blackened miners enjoying a game of marbles on their way home. This subject was considered a suitable topic for society artists such as Parker to paint speculatively for the art-buying public – the gentry, land owners and captains of industry – of early 19th Century Newcastle to enjoy. It was the first painting concerning the burgeoning coal industry to be displayed in the Royal Academy.

Portrait and landscape artist John Campbell Hodgson’s Under the Coaly Tyne is thought to be the earliest art work of underground coalworkings. Until recently it was not known if the artist had made preparatory drawings underground to make his wonderfully accurate observations. While installing this exhibition, an inscription discovered on the back of the painting revealed that indeed Campbell he had been down Reed Pit under the Tyne to ensure complete authenticity.

The role of Spennymoor Settlement in the rehabilitation of unemployed miners’ confidence is considered with examples of lithographs and sculpture by Tisa Hess – the only art tutor at the Settlement who had fled Berlin with her Jewish husband after the closure of the Bauhaus in the face of advancing Nazism.

The first painting of Durham Miners Gala from around 1880 by an unknown artist, but in the fashionable Impressionist style, hangs alongside John William Bird’s wonderful image of miners and their families visibly relieved at the improvement in working conditions that nationalisation of 1947 would bring the coal industry in his wonderful painting Year of Victory.

These paintings hang alongside works by the miners themselves with rarely seen works by Norman Cornish, Bill Hindmarsh, Bob Olley, Ted Holloway, Tom McGuinness and GP’s daughter Marjorie Arnfield on display.

Art was a vital form of communication for the miners. Because a man worked with his hands didn’t mean he didn’t think with his mind or feel from his soul. Expressing emotions was often difficult for the miner to articulate in words. To tell how it really was and what it really felt like to work in the mine, the miner found eloquence through his art – an eloquence which speaks to us all.

  • Many of the artworks in the exhibition are from the Gemini Collection of Mining Art. It is planned that a gallery dedicated to mining art and to permanently display the Gemini Collection will open in the area in 2017.
  • To complement the exhibition, the award-winning book Shafts of Light – Mining Art in the Great Northern Coalfield by Bob McManners and Gillian Wales has been reprinted and will be on sale for £14.95. It is an illustrated guide to North-Eastern mining art.
  • The exhibition Pitmen and Prelates runs until September 30. Admission is free with entry to the castle, which is £6 for adults, £5 for concessions and free for the under 16s. Further details on the Auckland Castle website.