AN HISTORIC council chamber has been demolished – but hopes are high it could be resurrected at a North-East museum.

The council offices on Seaside Lane, in Easington, east Durham, have been razed to the ground but the furniture and fittings were saved, in the hope the grand Edwardian council chamber can be reborn at Beamish Museum.

The council chamber hosted debates for nearly a century but has been used little since Easington District Council was abolished in 2009.

Durham County Council, which succeeded the district authority, moved most of the staff to new offices at Seaham.

Stuart Timmiss, its head of planning and assets, said initial marketing had found no commercial interest in the buildings and “clear advantages” to demolishing them.

The authority is in negotiations with a potential buyer interested in building houses on the site and is “hopeful of progressing a sale very soon”, he said.

Mr Timmiss continued: “The chamber has a lot of history and we were very keen to preserve what we could.

“We were extremely pleased that Beamish Museum agreed to take all of the furniture and fittings, with the hope of recreating the chamber at a later date.

“It’s fantastic that this bit of County Durham’s history is to be preserved.”

Jim Rees, Beamish’s assistant director for development, said the museum would have loved to have recovered more of the building and rebuilt it at Beamish, but could not think of a way of raising the “large amount” of money needed to do so.

Instead, it took desks, chairs, boards and panels and although there are no immediate plans to use them, it is hoped they will be incorporated into a future building in the attraction’s Beamish Town area.