HUNWICK’S a tranquil place between Bishop Auckland and Willington, panoramic views across the Co Durham countryside and sun-blessed last Tuesday evening.

Birds chorused, folk walked their dogs – Hunwick has Bassett hounds – and in the small, mid-terrace workingmen’s club only the pitter-potter of snooker balls disturbed the seven o’clock silence.

It hadn’t been like that the previous Saturday: Hunwick Workingmen’s Club, it transpires, is the punk rock capital of the North.

They’d been clashing on – is that the appropriate verb? – from 3-11pm, ten bands with names like Pit Bull, Hospital Food and, gloriously, Geoffrey Oicott.

What of the neighbours? What, for that matter, of the poor lads in the bar, simply trying to hear themselves drink?

“They all love it,” insists Lisa Hawkins, the greatly hospitable stewardess. “The neighbour on one side’s a bit deaf so he’s not that much bothered either way, but the people on the other side open their windows so they can hear it better.”

“I love it and I’m 80,” says Jack Elvin, alone in the bar with EastEnders. “It’s a family thing, everyone’s really welcoming. It might be a bit noisy, but it’s brilliant.”

A load of punk, indeed, has helped the club prosper through a time when so many others have played their last – but the Wheeltappers and Shunters it’s not.

GOOGLE “Hunwick” and “punk” and it’s at once evident what Jack Elvin means about it being a little bit noisy.

There’s a YouTube clip of a black-clad band – punk appears to have a Henry Ford approach to colour schemes – giving it what formerly was termed what fettle. Lest any became disoriented, the stage curtain identifies the location as HWMC DL15. “They’re tremendous people,” says Lisa, whose grandfather, George Daniel, was himself workingmen’s club secretary, but who may never have imagined that turns would take such a turn.

Only once, she says, has she had to put someone out. “People were quite surprised. They’d not seen my vicious side before.”

Neville, her husband, is also a punk enthusiast. “People now come here from all over the world, especially Europe,” says Neville. “There are some great musicians in punk music now, and for a lot of them there’s no better place than Hunwick.”

THE last time we wrote of Hunwick Workingmen’s Club was in 2012, when Tommy Ward – secretary for 50 years, in three different spells – had become the first 90-year-old to win a game in the snooker league, using the 7/6d cue he was given second hand as a 15-year-old.

In 1994, when he’d again taken over, the club had £98,000 debts, was two days from closure and went cloth cap in hand to the Fed. Now the mortgage is paid off and the club’s doing well.

Tom died last year: what did he make of punk? “He called it a bloody racket, those were always his words,” says Lisa. “That said, he’d still sit in the bar tapping his foot and his stick for an hour, before he decided it was time to go home.”

Ian Richardson, club chairman these past 31 years, sits in the same corner. “I didn’t even like punk music when it was good,” he says, “but it fills the concert room. It’s been awfully good for Hunwick WMC.”

PUNK days began five years ago, initially to mark club secretary Neville Blenkinsopp’s birthday. “The first year I put together three bands, the second year six and the last three we’ve had ten. We even had a band from Belgium,” says Neville, who lives in Bradford, works in Northallerton and still pays frequent visits to Hunwick.

Now there are several other punk events each year, while Bishop Auckland-based band Gimp Fist – reckoned the best around – practises at the club every Wednesday night.

The scene’s changed, says Neville. “Originally punk maybe had a bad name because it was all about revolution and stuff, but it’s not underground like it used to be. The image is of a whole lot of screaming, but it’s not like that. It can be a bit noisy, but there are some very talented musicians. The atmosphere’s brilliant.”

It’s also been greatly beneficial for a small club, a niche market. “An absolute no-brainer,” says Neville. “We were paying £200 to people who were no more than karaoke singers and maybe taking £20 at the door. Now we don’t have regular turns. On the punk day, we can take up to £4,000 over the bar. The club’s in a really strong position now.”

MENTIONED last week, former Tyne Tees Television man Paul Frost’s DVD on the history of HMS Trincomalee

offers a fascinating – and, better still, legitimate – theory for the origin of the term slush fund.

Ships’ cooks would skim off all the surface fat from salt beef and pork boilings – known as slush – barrel it and, once ashore, sell it as an improbable delicacy. The proceeds became known as the slush fund and even featured in a 1998 episode of The Simpsons. It was called Lard of the Dance.

FOLK appear to have enjoyed the piece a fortnight back on the Durham Miners’ Gala. John Maughan, in Wolsingham, even sends pictures of the latest fashion in shopping bags, spotted outside the Royal County Hotel, and of Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction when his attention was drawn to it.

Durham City mayor Bill Kellett writes to amend the guess that his first Big Meeting, at which he saw Clement Attlee, must have been in 1946. It was 1950, says the mayor, Attlee’s last Gala as prime minister.

Bill was 11, had travelled in the guard’s van from Hetton-le-Hole because there was no other space on the train.

“In 1946, I was a nipper living in Easington Lane, all seven of us to a one-bedroom colliery house. We probably didn’t have the money to put together to buy a bus ticket to Durham.”

Former Frankland Prison governor Dave Thompson, now reading the column in Australia, is concerned about the lady in red who encroached the platform towards the end of Corbyn’s speech.

“The time she spent by his side and the lack of any meaningful intervention highlights a very big security flaw. What sort of carpet did they have on that stage? It looks like a lot has been brushed beneath it.”

BACK to Durham last Wednesday for the monthly Age UK men’s breakfast. The speaker having taken to his sick bed, they had a little quiz instead. The column won – honest – 25 out of 26, the unanswerable question concerning the name of the lowest segment of the sternum. It’s the xiphoid process, we’re told – we old boys learn something new every day.