A BLUE plaque has been unveiled to mark almost a century of learning at a community venue where a number of acclaimed artists honed their skills.

The Spennymoor Settlement in Spennymoor, County Durham – known locally as the Pitmen’s Academy – was founded in 1930.

It was established “to encourage tolerant neighbourliness and voluntary social service and to give its members opportunity for increasing their knowledge, widening their interests and cultivating their creative power in a friendly atmosphere”.

Classes ranged from art to acting, sewing to shoe repairing, stamp collecting to chess.

The adjacent Everyman Theatre was built by unemployed miners in 1939 and for many years staged sell-out performances.

Former patrons included pitman painters Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness, celebrated author and playwright Sid Chaplin and Arnold Hadwin, one of many Settlement students to win a scholarship at Ruskin College, Oxford.

Read more: The house where Norman lived- blue plaque memorial to Spennymoor painter

Mr Hadwin became editor of the Northern Despatch, The Northern Echo’s sister paper, before editing in Bradford and Lincoln and was honoured with an OBE.

“I cannot imagine what my life would have been without the Spennymoor Settlement,” he once said.

On Saturday a blue plaque celebrating the centre's heritage, and carrying the name of those four men, was unveiled.

The ceremony was performed by former Settlement actress and volunteer Lily Whitehead, herself 100, and representatives of the Cornish, Chaplin, McGuinness and Hadwin families attended.

In recent times the building has been used more as a community centre, hosting coffee mornings and fitness groups, though the town’s youth theatre group still rehearses there and provided entertainment after the unveiling.

Settlement treasurer Malcolm Marsden said gaining planning permission for the plaque from Durham County Council had taken more than two years.

He said: “At first they wouldn’t let us have names on the plaque, which seemed a bit silly. It’s been quite an effort.”

Pauline Storey, the chair, said the Settlement began as a far-reaching sociological experiment when unemployment and hardship were the norm.

“It’s still a great facility,” she added.

On Friday, at nearby Byers Green, a blue plaque was unveiled at the former home of 18th century astronomer and architect Thomas Wright, described as “polymath, architect, designer and the first astronaut to describe the Milky Way.”

Read more: Wright’s Folly – or Westerton Observatory – reminds us to look to the stars

 

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