Industrial past that forged a modern village

There were two collieries near the village – Sherburn House Colliery half a mile to the south and Sherburn Colliery, near the site of the present sports centre.

These collieries had a major impact on population growth.

From 1801 to 1891, the population of Sherburn Township, which included Sherburn Hill, as well as Sherburn grew from 252 to 2,958.

Mining was not, however, the only industry in Sherburn by the mid-19th century.

Industries included a water powered corn mill called Hallgarth Mill, between Sherburn and Pittington, to the north, and another mill on the beck south of the village, near Sherburnhouse Colliery.

In the village was Parkinson’s grease factory and to the south-east, a magnesian limestone quarry.

Lime kilns are shown alongside this quarry on the 1860s’ map, but although the quarry expanded later in the century, it was disused by the 1920s. Other industries included a brick and tile works near Sherburn Hospital and another west of Sherburn, near the village railway station.

Sherburn Station, later Sherburn Colliery Station, was situated on the Leamside line just west of the village.

There was another station at Sherburn Hospital, but both were originally called Sherburn Station. They were renamed in 1874 to avoid confusion.

Sherburn Colliery Station was the nearest station to the village. It closed to passengers in 1941 and then to goods in 1959 and was subsequently demolished.

There is, however, a surviving reminder. On the western edge of the village, near the railway line, a terrace of houses called Sherburn Station can still be seen along the south side of Front Street.

Until the mid-20th century, another two terraces stood parallel to this on the north side of the street and together, the three terraces formed a more or less separate village called Sherburn Station.

Wedged between the Leamside line to the west and Lambton Railway to the east, fields separated the settlement of Sherburn Station from the rest of Sherburn.

During the 19th century, Sherburn’s tiny station village had two pubs, called the Colliery Hotel and the Station Hotel. It was also home to a Primitive Methodist chapel from 1862. This building has now gone, but some readers may remember it as the later site of Barnfather’s Garage.

Also gone is the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel of 1861, which stood at the eastern end of Sherburn.

These earlier chapels were succeeded in 1964 by the Parkinson Memorial Methodist Chapel, in Hallgarth Street.

The Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was the first place of worship to open in Sherburn village and previously Methodists had worshipped in a house near the post office.

Sherburn’s parish church was not built until 1872. It was erected just west of the village centre and was designed by the Newcastle architects Austin and Johnson, who built most of the Victorian buildings that were added to the medieval buildings at Sherburn Hospital.

Before 1872, Anglicans in Sherburn had to attend services at churches in Shadforth or at Hallgarth, near Pittington, where many Sherburn residents of former times are buried.

The vicarage was built near Sherburn Church in 1874.

Sherburn’s first school was opened in 1804 by a local landholder called Arthur Mowbray and was rebuilt by Mrs Pemberton, of Sherburn Hall, in 1848.

It stood in Front Street in the west of the village, not far from where the parish church now stands.

The building was later used as a Sunday school after a new school was erected in 1913 next to Hallgarth Street, near the village crossroads.

The 1913 building became a council school in 1969 after senior pupils transferred to a secondary modern northeast of the village.

The school was demolished in the 1970s when the secondary modern became a primary school. A street called School Court now stands on the site.

Sherburn’s present-day pubs, the Cross Keys and Lambton Arms, in the centre of the village, are listed in a directory of the 1850s.

The Lambton Arms was also once known as the Earl of Durham and was the scene of a 19th century murder on May 1, 1868, in which one policeman shot dead another, a story that we have featured in a past Past Times.

Also nearby was the Grey Horse, now a carpet factory shop, while further west was the Foresters’ Arms. This was once the last building in the village heading out towards Sherburn Hill.

Other notable features situated in the village included the Victorian reading room, of 1850, and the Sherburn House Welfare Hall, of 1929.

The welfare hall stood near the bowling green and served miners from Sherburnhouse Colliery. It was taken over by the Welfare Commission in 1931 when the colliery closed.

In 1952, Sherburn Hill Colliery took the building over but it burned down four years later, in 1956.

The reading room was endowed in 1850 by Mr TC Thompson and is now a bakery shop.

Also of prominence in the village was the co-operative store.

Now Sherburn Community Centre, it was established in 1899 as a branch of Sherburn Hill co-operative society. The words Sherburn Hill Cooperative may have confused the occasional visitor into thinking they had arrived in Sherburn Hill by mistake.

Housing development has been a feature of Sherburn’s most recent history, although one notable early housing project was the Aged Miners’ Homes of 1913, in Hallgarth Street.

They were called the George Parkinson Memorial Homes after a local Methodist preacher.

Since the 1950s, Sherburn village has seen the development of housing estates north and south of Front Street, with one of the most recent being a small estate of private housing behind the old terrace called Sherburn Station. Today, Sherburn is very much a mixture of the old and new.