John North

Once there was a pit, a school, two chapels, institute, post office and several shops. There was Old Row and New Row, School Row and Chapel Row, Long Row and shortcomings.

Now Page Bank is returned to nature. "All that's left is our overgrown front door step," says Willie McDowell, "but I still come back quite often to see it."

Last Saturday there was a village reunion, a chorus of canny folk unanimously affirming that if they rebuilt it they'd be back down there tomorrow.

"Flood back," says Jean Snailum, momentarily forgetting that it was the flood which finished the job in the first place, but if ever there was a village which reflected the maxim about humbleness and home, it was Page Bank.

For them, manifestly, there was no place like it.

The village was on the far bank of the River Wear, a couple of miles west of Spennymoor. Whitworth, on the opposite bank, was smaller, posher and where the pub was - though Page Bank had electricity when Whitworth still used oil lamps.

"Correction," says Harry Heslop. "Page Bank had electricity when someone had a shilling for the meter."

The colliery opened in 1855, employed 726 in 1902, closed in 1931. The school was built for almost 400, including pupils ferried across the river from Byers Green, a mile upstream. It closed in 1964.

In 1951, Durham County Council had declared Page Bank, and 120 other settlements, to be Category D. D for Doomed, Done For. Even before the great flood, the grim night of November 5, 1967 when the Wear burst its banks, the foundations were fatally undermined and the population down to 200.

"It was a Sunday night," recalls Joan Milburn. "The bairns were having a bath in front of the fire because it was school next morning.

"The first we knew was water coming in the back door and then, whoosh, the fire went out. We opened the door and the water came in through the back and straight out the front. Our Robert was trying to brush it out; talk about peeing against the wind.

"We came out of there in a dinghy, came back for our stuff but never lived there again. I would, though, I'd go back in a crack."

The reunion and historical exhibition, for both Whitworth and Page Bank folk, was held at the Whitworth Hall Hotel, once home to the Shafto family. "It's been wonderful. I've never seen so many people smiling," said Verna McEneny, one of the organisers.

They'd found tickets for the Shafto Arms Leek Club, the Page Bank Old People's Treat whist drive (one shilling), the Page Bank Home Guard Athletic Club.

Home Guard? "You know how everyone laughed at Dads Army when they had broom handles instead of guns," said Willie McDowell. "That was really all they had in Page Bank."

There was also 1930s material from the Page Bank Club, formed to help the unemployed. "It would be of great service to us if you could buy two or three besoms made by these men," it said. "With or without a handle, 1/3d."

Photographs and newspaper cuttings abounded, old men on practised hunkers trying to read them. "It's not so bad getting down," they said, "it's getting up again."

"Black night of horror leaves flood village devastated," read one headline, "Half village quits homes at Page Bank," said another, "Page Bank like the Phoenix to rise from the ashes," claimed a third.

It never did.

Another display featured George Courtney, Page Bank lad who became one of the world's top football referees. None mentioned the late Ronnie Heslop, to whom many column inches have also been devoted.

For George Courtney, Her Majesty's pleasure was the MBE, for Ronnie "Rubberbones" Heslop, it was something else entirely. He became in 1961 the first man to escape from Durham jail, fled the dogs, vanished into the arms and the interconnecting attics of the folk back home in Page Bank.

"He was being chased, swam the swollen river three times," recalled Jean Snailum. "Ronnie ran dripping wet into his mam's, told her the police would be round in a few minutes to say he'd drowned and not to worry because he hadn't. Five minutes later the police came."

Harry Heslop, Ronnie's brother, remembered frequent calls from the constabulary. "Peter Eddy, the detective (who later became head of Durham County CID) would sit on our fender, have a cup of tea, reckon they knew where Ronnie was.

"They'd come at all hours because we always had a good fire on. There was an opencast over the road."

Ronnie, likely as not, would be watching proceedings from his sanctuary above the toilets. He was on the run for six weeks.

"This community was real knitted together, near enough all related," said Harry. "We used to sit down and work out who was related to who. If one family was short in Page Bank, another would always see them right."

"You had no fear of anything down here," said Eva, Harry's wife, "You could leave your door open 24 hours a day."

Jean Snailum, still in the Whitworth house where she was born and still Jean Forrest to her old neighbours, offered a guided tour of the ghost village on a splendid summer's evening.

That was the bookie's runner's, she said, and that the fish shop. Over there was Jenny's shop, and further up PC Johnson's, who'd rattle the windows with instructions to put the light out.

It was a wonderful place and could be wonderful still, said Jean, but as last Saturday made them all too well aware, an awful lot of water has flowed under Page Bank bridge since then.

THE Whitworth and Page Bank reunion coincided with the launch of the Whitworth Heritage Trail and guide, based around the historic parish church, and of a Vivienne Lowe's Short History of Page Bank. Culled from those chronicles, ten forgotten facts about Page Bank.

l An underground fire at Page Bank Colliery in 1858 killed ten miners, including boys of 11, 13 and 14. "When the ten came up it was with the image of death stamped upon their ghastly features," reported the Durham Chronicle.

l The "British School" opened in 1874. Headmaster Fred Harle reported in 1886 that he had "flogged three girls and two boys for inaudible speaking - a thing I have constant problems with."

l A woman teacher inexplicably went missing in 1905. A week later she was found, "in a very weak state", in Stanhope workhouse.

* George Booth, a brick maker in 1901, lived in a house with four small rooms with his wife, 11 children, aged between three and 24, and a lodger.

l A public auction in 1930 sold 170 Page Bank houses for £6,912.

l The Miners Institute and Library had a reading room, billiard room and "most liberally supplied" library with over 1,000 books.

l The Primitive Methodist chapel, built in 1873, seated 250. The Wesleyans' iron chapel seated 350 and cost £250.

l The Shafto Arms never served another pint after the flood of November 1967. It had been opened in 1900, the first landlord also a bone setter "of some repute".

l A new bridge over the Wear was opened by Tony Blair in 1996 - 60 years after it had first been promised.

l Page Bank and Whitworth Women's Institute once had 120 members. It still meets in Spennymoor Town Hall.

The Page Bank history costs £1.50 and is available from Vivienne Lowe, School House, 17 The Village, Brancepeth, Co. Durham DH7 8DG. The Whitworth Heritage Trail guide, with many photographs, is £2.50 from Verna McEneny, 5 Kirkdale, Spennymoor, Co Durham. Proceeds go to the church; add postage in both cases.