Striking miners faced jail after clashes with police

Miners' houses in the villages were more substantial than those found in other places and, unusually, each house had its own large garden for growing vegetables or fattening pigs.

Pease and Partners gave great attention to drainage and sanitary conditions, and took much interest in the education and welfare of its workforce.

Schools were built for youngsters and a Miners' Institute, near South Terrace, provided reading rooms and recreational activities.

However, this building was somewhat eclipsed by the Memorial Hall that opened, in nearby Brandon Road, in 1923.

The hall, a Grade II-listed building, was built to commemorate miners who lost their lives in the Great War.

Now boarded up, it had its own cinema, concert hall, library and swimming pool.

Built in Edwardian style with several rooms, it was perhaps a little too grand for a small community and experienced financial difficulties in the late 1920s.

Nevertheless, it continued to operate a cinema and ballroom for many decades afterwards.

Pease and Partners was a major source of funding for the hall's construction, contributing £3,000 to the total cost of £10,000. Local miners raised the rest through subscription.

On the opening day, Peter Lee, a prominent mining leader, unveiled a plaque, but the Peases, though invited, chose not to attend.

It was a wise move, since the family was no longer popular in Esh Winning.

Miners were angered by the firm's attempts to increase working hours on top of poor wages during the economic depression of the 1920s.

Things reached a head in the 1926 General Strike when the firm employed blackleg workers and billeted police to evict striking miners from their homes.

The secretary and treasurer of the Memorial Hall were among those evicted.

After clashes with police, they were arrested and imprisoned in Durham Jail for a month.

Few of the 19th Century terraces built by the Peases in Esh Winning and Waterhouses remain.

Most of Waterhouses lay in what is now woodland, north of the Deerness Railway.

The railway is now a walk and adjoining woodland paths mark the course of former streets like the unimaginatively named North, West and East Terrace.

The colliery stood nearby.

Today, Waterhouses is a small village, consisting of Station Street and a main thoroughfare called Russell Street.

This road continues west into neighbouring Hamilton Row and both are named after the Hamilton-Russells, of Brancepeth Castle.

Esh Winning has seen the growth of new housing estates in recent years but much of the older colliery village has gone.

Like Waterhouses, there was a North, West and East Terrace all located in what is now empty land north of Esh Winning Industrial Estate. The industrial estate itself occupies the site of Esh Winning Colliery.

South Terrace, a later addition south of the colliery, was built in the 1870s or 1880s and still exists, while Lymington Terrace, further south across the River Deerness, formed an almost separate hamlet.

Its origin is uncertain, but it may have housed workers at a neighbouring brickyard. The terrace lay near Woodland Place and West View.

Esh Winning's three main roads are Fair View, Durham Road and Newhouse Road.

All date from the 19th Century and intersect to form a triangle.

Durham Road and Newhouse Road join at the market place where the post office and Stags Head pub have stood since the 19th Century.

A cinema called the Pavilion once stood behind the pub.

A road called Station View leads south from the market place to the site of another railway station.

Though situated in Esh Winning, this was Waterhouses' passenger station and should not be confused with the smaller goods station that existed at Waterhouses itself. The passenger station closed in 1951.

The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs stands at the northern end of Esh Winning, near the junction of Fair View and Newhouse Road.

Situated alongside a little stream called the Priest Burn, it is a reminder of the area's strong Catholic links.

It stands near the site of an earlier Catholic chapel called Newhouse that was established in the 1650s.

The priests of Newhouse served many Catholic farms in the area, though Mass was often held in secret. According to the records, one Newhouse Priest called Ferdinando Asmall, who died in 1798, lived to the age of 103.

In 1800, Newhouse chapel fell into ruin and its priest moved to a new chapel further north at Esh Laude.

We will cover this place in a future Durham Memories.

Newhouse was without a priest until the middle to late 19th Century, when many Irish labourers went to work at Esh Winning.

Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, which dates from 1881, was built to serve the Irish settlers who were so numerous in Esh Winning that the village was known as Paddy Island.

Workers seemed to come to Esh Winning from almost every county in the Emerald Isle, and included my great grandfather, from County Monaghan, whose family settled in the village.

Most residents came from County Durham, but immigrants to Waterhouses and Esh Winning came from many other parts of England including a significant number from non-mining areas like Suffolk.

Several Methodist churches were also built in the villages.

For economic reasons, Esh Winning Colliery closed between 1930 and 1942, and Waterhouses closed between 1927 and 1929.

However, both reopened.

Waterhouses Colliery closed for good in 1966 and Esh Colliery in 1968.

If you have memories of Durham you would like to share with The Northern Echo, write to David Simpson, Durham Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF. Email David.Simpson@nne. co. uk or telephone (01325) 505098.

Published: 30/01/2004