WHEN the Salvin family built a new parish church for Croxdale at Sunderland Bridge in 1845, the addition two years earlier of Hett Village to the parish must have been an important factor.

Hett, which had no church of its own, increased the population of the Croxdale parish by 230 people and a bigger church was needed.

Hett lies a mile south-east of Sunderland Bridge and was transferred from the parish of Kirk Merrington. It was a sensible move since Kirk Merrington is a good four miles south of Hett.

In 1881, a chapel of ease dedicated to St Michael was built in the north-east corner of Hett's village green. It gave Hett parishioners a degree of independence from Croxdale, until its closure in 1978.

Hett can be approached from the A167 via Hett Lane and is accessible from Sunderland Bridge, in the north, or from Low Butcher Race, to the south.

Low Butcher Race, home of the Coach and Horses Inn, lies on the A167 about a mile south of Croxdale and was reputedly named because a party of foraging Scots were ambushed and butchered here shortly before the Battle of Nevilles Cross in 1346.

Hett sits on a hill that the Anglo-Saxons thought resembled a hat and the village name simply means "hat".

Despite recent housing, it is a charming rural oasis, slightly off the beaten track and gives an impression of how many Durham villages may have appeared centuries ago. It is best known for its duck pond, its large village green and as being the place where the fashion designer Bruce Oldfield lived as a boy. He was taught to sew here by his seamstress foster mother, Violet Masters.

In the 1890s, Hett's population was over 350 and the village was described as "pleasantly situated, possessing a green of some acres in extent, round which the houses form a square." The village has changed little since that time.

The huge, if rather rugged looking village green with its duck pond, looks a little bit like a farmer's grazing field. In fact, a number of houses surrounding the green were originally farms. The oldest of these is Slashpool House near the south-east corner of the green. A plaque shows the date as 1708, but parts of the farm may be older and the roof is internally constructed from a "cruck truss" wooden frame.

LIKE many villages, Hett began as an agricultural settlement but it also very much a part of Durham's mining history. It was never the site of a major colliery, but mining was carried out here in medieval times. In the 13th and 14th Century sea coal, as it was then known, was mined at Hett under the jurisdiction of the Priors of Durham Cathedral. In fact, Hett is one of only a small handful of places in County Durham that have documentary evidence of medieval mining.

In 1407, it is known that the Prior of Durham made an agreement with Sir William Blakiston for the construction of a trench "for carrying off water and winning of coal in the lands of Hette".

Blakiston was related by marriage to a family called Hette (or Hett), who owned the manor in medieval times, and took their name from the village.

The site of the medieval mine at Hett is not known but shafts marked on old maps may be associated with the period.

They were located immediately north of the village but may, in fact, be associated with later 18th Century coal workings.

Sadly, opencast mining destroyed the evidence in 1966.

Hett's village pub, the Hett Arms, stands on the western side of the village green and was one of two located in the village in the 19th Century.

Nearby is the village hall, a striking and slightly incongruous feature. It opened in 1962 at a cost of £1,700 and is a salvaged Nissen hut, a barnlike building with a semicircular corrugated roof. Once a common sight during the war years, Nissen huts were named after their inventor Lieutenant Colonel Peter Norman Nissen.

Mining and farming were by no means the only industries associated with Hett. To the west of the village, sand and stone quarrying took place in the 19th Century and Hett was also for many centuries the home of a working mill.

HETT Mill lies on the Tursdale Beck, an upper section of the Croxdale Beck less than a mile east of Hett. There are records of a mill here as early as 1451, but the present buildings and nearby remnants of a millrace are from a later period.

Hett Mill seems to have worked in the production of corn and paper at some stage and was one of four mills mentioned on the Tursdale Beck in 1810. The mill site is on the north side of a level crossing on the main London to Edinburgh Railway line.

Tursdale House, about 100 metres across the beck to the north of the mill, was once the site of a manor house. The house and its accompanying farm buildings occupy the site of the shrunken medieval village of Tursdale. It is situated on Strawberry Lane near a wooded dene that forms the southern terminus of woodland twists and turns its way as far north as Shincliffe.

This was the original Tursdale village, called Trollesden in 1274 but probably named after a Norseman called Thrall or Thryll. The name means something like Thrall's Dene.

The former medieval village of Tursdale is slightly to the north-east of Hett and should not be confused with the present Tursdale, a former colliery site a mile to the south.