A GROUP of Portuguese students plan to visit a North-East museum to discover how the region’s mining heritage mirrors their own.

Durham Mining Museum in Spennymoor, County Durham, will host a secondary school from Sao Pedro da Cova, in northern Portugal, in late spring.

The youngsters are exploring the long history of coal mining in their own communities and want to discover more about the similarities with the old Durham coalfield.

The group of 24 pupils, who will travel with four teachers and a headmistress, are particularly keen to learn about the role women in the industry for a current project.

And they will ask how the museum handles data and commemorates the past so they can help authorities back home preserve their heritage.

Spennymoor Town Councillor Andrew Smith, the museum’s treasurer, said: “The fact they contacted us shows we are doing something right, we have a very popular webpage with extensive records which a lot of people are using.

“It is wonderful to know what we’re doing here is being noticed around the world and could help these students.

“Remarkably, two weeks after receiving their first letter an amateur historian from Oxford send us a full history of women in pits so we’ve plenty to share.”

The Portuguese connection is just the latest example of the volunteer-ran museum’s reputation spreading far and wide.

Since it relocated from Thornley to Spennymoor in 2011, about 6,000 people have visited the museum.

It regularly gets visitors from across the UK, often researching their family history, and has seen people from as far away as Canada, New Zealand and Australia drop in.

Cllr Smith said: “We’re doing what we set out to do, preserve and share our coal mining history and bring people into the town and we’re very proud.

“We get all sorts of people from former miners reminiscing to children and students.”

The latest development at the museum is the installation of new storage and display cabinets, replacing old catering tables which Spennymoor Town Council provided when the museum moved into the town hall.

Durham County Councillor for Spennymoor Ian Geldard funded the units with £4,584 from his neighbourhood budget.

Cllr Geldard, also leader of the town council, said: “The museum is doing great and, as one of the big priorities for people in Spennymoor is the vibrancy of town centre, it is especially important that it is generating international interest because visitors help the local economy.

“This was a good project and I was happy to get really involved in.

“Over two days I helped pick up the units in a van and lug them upstairs.”

It has also taken a model of Chilton colliery, thought to have been made by pit apprentices in the 1940s, on loan from Beamish, The Living Museum of the North.