Of all the former colliery villages near Durham City, Brandon is probably the largest. In many ways it is more like a small town than a village and although it has almost swallowed up the neighbouring villages of Langley Moor and Meadowfield, their histories are closely linked.

In the first half of the nineteenth century most of this area was open fields and although there was small-scale mining, most people were employed on farms.

There was no Meadowfield in the mid-nineteenth century and Langley was no more than a hamlet of farms. The hamlet can still be seen to the west of Langley Moor.

It is reached along Front Street, which is the road alongside the Lord Boyne pub at right angles to the A690. Continuing along this road we cross the former Durham to Bishop Auckland railway (now a long distance footpath) before reaching the stone buildings of the old hamlet.

The Langley Moor of today is centred upon its High Street formed by the A690 but there were no houses in this area until the later nineteenth century. Even the London to Edinburgh railway line that passes overhead, near the Lord Boyne pub, did not arrive until the 1870s.

The major industrial feature of Langley Moor in the early nineteenth century was a large paper mill alongside the River Browney. It was located near the attractive piece of riverside woodland, called Holliday Park, about a quarter of a mile from the point where the Browney is joined by the River Deerness.

A terrace of cottages called Paper Row once stood alongside the main road north of the Deerness towards Stonebridge and may have accommodated the workers.

Of course old Langley wasn't the only pre-industrial village of the area. Old Brandon village on the north-western edge of the present Brandon was a former agricultural community called East Brandon.

It was the largest of three settlements called Brandon, the others being West Brandon and South Brandon Farms that still exist two miles west towards Esh Winning.

Ancient man knew the Brandons well. Two Iron Age settlements were excavated at West Brandon in the early 1960s, showing evidence of circular huts, ditches and palisade enclosures. A smelting furnace with recesses for bellows was also found. Used in the extraction of ore, it was an extremely rare find and aroused great interest.

Consisting of a bowl cut into a rock, it was worked by skilled operators who were experts in keeping the furnace at the correct temperature for several days at a time.

Evidence of pre-historic enclosures have also been found near Brandon village and in 1904 a crouched Bronze Age skeleton was found in a coffin beneath an imposing mound at East Brandon Wood. Unfortunately, open cast mining destroyed the site in 1979.

The Romans were no strangers to Brandon either. They built not one, but two roads here. One was Dere Street, the great Roman road between York and the Scottish Borders.

It runs through the fields at West Brandon. The other road, a north eastern offshoot of Dere Street, has no name, but goes through Brancepeth village apparently destined for Durham, but disappears amongst the houses on the southern edge of Brandon. Here it runs parallel and slightly to the north of the former railway that is now the Brandon-Bishop Auckland walk.

The Anglo-Saxons gave Brandon its name and early spellings suggest that it means "Broom-Don" 'the hill where prickly bushes grew'.

Popular belief favours another theory that a wild boar or brawn roamed the path between here and Brancepeth. Brandon was reputedly the brawn's lair and this gave rise to the name of an old farm called Brawn's Den near South Brandon. Brawn's Den is also the name of a Brandon pub that was named in 1982 as the result of a competition.

For centuries Brandon was part of the vast estate of Brancepeth Castle that belonged in medieval times to the powerful Neville family. In 1569, the Nevilles rebelled against Elizabeth I in the Rising of the North and their lands including Brandon were confiscated by the crown and broken up.

In 1630 Brandon was sold to a London silk merchant called Edward Copley but his family sold it to the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1711. A succeeding Earl of Shaftesbury sold Brandon to William Russell, one of the most powerful coal owners of the time.

Russell had purchased Brancepeth Castle in 1796 and set about restoring lands to the Brancepeth estate. His son Matthew, reputedly the wealthiest commoner in England, succeeded his father to the estate. Matthew's daughter Emma married the seventh Viscount Boyne, who was surnamed Hamilton, but he changed his name to Hamilton-Russell upon marriage. The Viscounts Boyne continued to be the owners of Brandon into the early part of the twentieth century. They would see the Brandon area change from being a largely agricultural community of 500 or so people into a populous mining community dominated by six large collieries all within a one-mile radius of old Brandon village.

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. E-mail David.Simpson@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505098

Published: 29/11/2003