Remembering the pit village that vanished

It has been and gone and few have even heard of the place.

Footpaths follow an old wagonway through the area, and if you visit today you find Whitwell Grange, Whitwell East Farm and Whitwell House, but no Whitwell village.

These farms existed in the neighbourhood long before the colliery opened in the 1830s, but they belong to Whitwell's agricultural history rather than the mining past.

Whitwell was located near Durham City, a mile east of Shincliffe, but the site is now isolated from Shincliffe by the busy A1(M) motorway Whitwell's history goes back to Anglo-Saxon times and belonged, along with Sherburn and Shadforth, to the district of Quarringtonshire.

The name means white spring' and the Whit Well in question was situated on the north side of Whitwell House Farm.

Wells were often trading places and the proximity of the Chapman Beck, on the east side of Whitwell, could be significant. A chapman was a trader.

In 1183, Whitwell belonged to a man called William but, from about the 1200s, it was held by the masters of Sherburn Hospital, that still stands to the north.

Whitwell and its area was historically called Whitwell House and was extraparochial.

This meant that it did not belong to a parish and had no church of its own.

The other strange thing about Whitwell was that agricultural produce from here was apparently toll free at Durham market.

In the 1600s, Whitwell was held by the twice-widowed Thomasine, who was initially the wife of Ralph Lever, a Master of Sherburn Hospital.

She later married Robert Warture, a gent, but he also passed away before her.

When Thomasine died, Whitwell was sold to Thomas Bullock and then to Bullock's nephew, Thomas Brass of Flass near Ushaw Moor.

In 1718, the Brasses sold Whitwell to John and Thomas Middleton, of Cleatlam and Isaac Teasdale, of Staindrop. These two families intermarried at a later date and in 1806, one of their number, called - believe it or not - Middleton Teasdale, sold Whitwell to his aunt, Jane Bacon.

When Jane Bacon died, she left Whitwell to her nephew, the Rev Henry Wastell, who sold it to John Gregson of Durham City.

Between 1737 and 1739, Abraham Teasdale operated a small land-sale colliery at Whitwell in conjunction with Ann Wilkinson.

Land sale collieries were usually nothing more than little pits where coal was sold for local consumption. Larger sea-sale collieries, by contrast sold their coal for shipment by sea to London via the North-East ports.

When Whitwell Colliery opened on a grander scale, as a sea-sale colliery, almost exactly a century later, some old tools and a peculiar pump, associated with the earlier mine, were discovered.

The 19th century Whitwell Colliery opened in 1837. Its owners were Andrew White, Mr Robson and Mr Ogden. It was linked by wagonway to the new railway that ran from Shincliffe village to Sunderland and joined the line near Sherburn Hospital.

From an early date, the colliery was also linked to the Leamside line that still passes through the area today. In those days, the Leamside was the main east coast line that connected London to the North.

Coal from Whitwell was shipped to Sunderland but it was also hoped to link the colliery to the Clarence Railway at Coxhoe. This would have allowed Whitwell's coal to be taken to Teesside and Hartlepool as well as to Sunderland.

The intended branch from Coxhoe was approved by Parliament, but never reached any further north than Heugh Hall Row at Old Quarrington on the outskirts of Bowburn.

Later, in the 1860s or 1870s, Whitwell's wagonway was eventually linked to Hartlepool via a new line that crossed Cassop Moor.

Whitwell village was built next to Whitwell colliery and housed the miners. It was quite a small village of about 30 or 40 houses, plus a Primitive Methodist chapel.

Its population in 1841 (including the farms) was 173 and, apart from the chapel, there was no major feature in the village.

Whitwell was not the only village built for Whitwell miners.

One mile north, at Gilesgate Moor on the eastern outskirts of Durham City, a village of 700 souls called New Durham was built by the Whitwell Colliery owner, Andrew White.

Fordyce, a Durham historian writing in the 1850s, stated that New Durham was built between 1836 and 1837 for the Whitwell miners. In reality, however, New Durham may have also served other collieries in the neighbourhood.

This would explain why White built the village a mile from Whitwell.

There was good demand for houses at Gilesgate Moor and it brought in money from rent.

On the map, New Durham was much bigger than Whitwell, but the population of 700 probably included nearby pit rows like Teasdale Terrace.

Originally called Teasdale's Terrace, it is now overlooked by the huge Tesco supermarket at Dragonville. The terrace was very probably named after the Teasdale family who had first worked coal at Whitwell back in the 1700s.

Whitwell Colliery closed in about 1874 and other collieries in the neighbourhood also closed around this time.

New Durham was hard hit and by the 1920s, most of the village was demolished. Two stone houses remain on what was once the front street opposite Durham's Sherburn Road housing estate.

A shop occupies one old house, but another, now a private house, was once a pub.

Now called Old Whitwell House, it was once the Whitwell Inn and is a lasting reminder of the link between Gilesgate Moor and Whitwell.

Although New Durham was badly affected by pit closures in the late 19th century, Whitwell village seems to have faired better despite its proximity to Whitwell Colliery.

The colliery closure of 1874 could have destroyed Whitwell, but two-thirds of the houses were still inhabited by the time of the 1881 census.

Most miners at Whitwell had found work at Sherburn House Colliery, half a mile to the north-east, and they didn't mind the walk to work.

Sherburn House Colliery kept Whitwell village alive for a time but, when Sherburn House Colliery closed in 1935, Whitwell's days were numbered.

Today, the site of Whitwell Colliery and its village has been and gone, but hopefully, now, a few will remember the place.