How Norman Cornish captured a Durham coalminers' corner

“It shows the level crossing, footbridge, signal box and a row of houses which faced the line. As kids, we used to wait on the footbridge and then run through the smoke and the steam as the train passed underneath.”

Very kindly, Norman’s family have given us permission to reproduce the painting (above), which was nearing completion when we visited his house in Spennymoor in 2008. He had two versions of it in his upstairs studio: one, a rough early version (below) on a piece of hardboard propped up on a side table; the other, the real thing, 5ft long, was stretched between two easels so that it caught the light falling in through the window on a grey day.

“When I was courting my wife Sarah – that would be 60 years ago – the bus from Spennymoor used to come round the corner into Trimdon Grange and this is the scene I used to see as I got off," he told us at the time.

He called the picture Colliery Memory, and in the background are two pit wheels with their spinning winding gear. Next to them is summit of the huge pitheap – the biggest in the county.

Men labour up a steep set of steps on the footbridge and as they cross the tracks, they are lost from sight by a belch of steam and smoke from the engine below – perhaps Brian and his mates are also hidden from view in the cloud.

Around the margins, women stop for a gossip. Children climb on the crossing gate or bowl a hoop along the terrace. A dog barks. A flock of pigeons circles through the sky, twisting like a shoal of fish around their coop, while white washing billows on a line beneath.

Norman's sketch of the signalbox outside the Dovecote Inn

"I'm painting it because you don't get this today, this mixed up jumble of streets and washing and collieries and railways all in a great big heap together," said Norman, who painted not just the scenes but also the life that bustled in and out and around them.

Cornish's corner today, as seen on Google StreetView. The railway line crossed the road where the three trees are today. The Dovecote Inn is directly behind the photographer

He was right, because nearly all of it has gone today: the railway, the colliery, the terraces. Only oddments from the past remain, standing out in the landscaped grass: three inns survive, two as private houses, and Rose Street Methodist Church, where Norman married Sarah in 1946, held its last service in 2014 and is now surrounded by light industrial units (below).

Looking north up Salters Lane with the landmark Dovecote Hotel at the top of the street on November 30, 1970. It looks as the level crossing gates just in front of the Dovecote still exists. This was the Ferryhill & Hartlepool branch which ran into Trimdon Grange Colliery which was on the left out of the picture. The tall buiilding on the left was the signalbox which controlled the level crossing. All the buildings on the right - Cooks Terrace - have been cleared and replaced by a wide grass verge

Trimdon Grange Colliery was sunk in 1845 beside the Ferryhill to Hartlepool railway. It worked intermittently until Walter Scott, of Newcastle, invested in it in 1880 causing the settlement of Trimdon Grange to explode into life.

The colliery’s bleakest day was February 16, 1882, when an explosion killed s bleakest day was February 16, 1882, when an explosion killed 74 men and boys – a story we shall have to revisit for the 140th anniversary in six weeks’ time.

In its heyday in the 1920s, the pit employed more than 1,400 men. Many of them came from elsewhere in the UK – one of the pubs was Welsh Harp which was named after the musical instrument that is one of the emblems of Wales, from where many of its customers had come.

The pubs of Trimdon Grange, as seen on Google StreetView. On the left is the Welsh Harp while the white building in the middle is the Dovecote Inn. The new edition of Pevsner's architectural guide to County Durham calls it "overpowering but memorable". It features an eccentric early 20th Century frontage but the rest of the building could be 100 years older - it predates the colliery. To the right of it is the track where the Ferryhill to Hartlepool Railway ran and then comes the former Colliery Inn

In the late 1930s, the pit went into decline, although it continued to employ hundreds of men in its coking ovens into the 1960s. The last shift finished on February 16, 1968, and left behind was the largest pitheap in Durham, 150ft high, towering over the terraces of the Grange. A few years before the Aberfan disaster of 1966, when a Welsh pitheap collapsed onto a school, killing 144 people, a lake had formed in a depression at the top of the Grange pitheap. The water broke out, spilled down the side and flooded the terraced houses in the Plantation rows beneath, although fortunately no one was hurt.

“The heap, containing more than 1m cubic yards of debris, is a product of a million or miners over the past 100 years,” said The Northern Echo in 1965 as the removal of the heap was planned.

The demolition of the miners’ terraces, the removal of the colliery and the landscaping of the pitheap continued into the 1970s, and now Trimdon Grange is unrecognisable from the boomtown pit village which sprung up in the 1880s. Certainly Norman would not recognise the stop where the Trimdon Motor Services bus dropped him outside the Dovecote on his way, heart in mouth, to visit Sarah.

IF you follow Norman Cornish on Facebook, you will see a post every Monday morning telling the story behind one of his paintings. Just search for his name, or visit normancornish.co.uk

More Trimdon Grange memories:

"Your picture from January 1964 shows a man walking up what we used to call the cinder path, which was a good place for sledging in the winter," says Brian Slater. "The street running on the left is Downs Terrace and you can just see the end of South View on the top right. The fence made from old doors on the right was the perimeter of Bob Cunningham's property. He ran a transport and demolition company which I think had the contract for the demolition of the Plantation houses, where most of the doors for the fence would have come from."

“The row of houses facing the camera is St Albans Terrace and the back street where the children are playing is South View,” says Karen Dobson of the August 1969 picture which graced the front cover of Memories 554, showing the pitheap towering over Trimdon Grange. “Both streets are still there.  
“You can see the top of St Alban’s Church spire in the left of the picture and the street behind St Albans Terrace is Lillie Terrace which faces onto the main road – Front Street – through the village.
“I lived in St Albans Terrace as a child and the black and white photo makes it look quite bleak but the reality was quite different. I have many happy memories of living in Trimdon Grange with its friendly and safe community and at times wish I was back in those carefree days.”

While Brian Slater grew up in Trimdon Grange, his wife, Enid, grew up in Trimdon Village although her father, Joe Proud, played cricket for the Trimdon Grange side which won the Coxhoe and District League and the Coxhoe Nursing Cup in 1939. “I think the picture was taken in front of the pit manager’s house at the bottom of the Watch Bank, between the Village and the Grange,” she says. “I wonder if anyone else is related to any of the players.” Back row, from left: James Parkinson (umpire), J Parkinson, William Dowson, H Harrison, R Watts, William Hargreaves, Joe Proud, WJ Roberts. Centre: A Henderson, JJ Carter, RS Tate Esq BSc JP (patron), AW Tulip Esq (president), T Jordan. Front: William Kirby, J Davison (captain), T Flannagan