JOHN Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached at Shincliffe in 1780 while staying at the house of a Mr Parker. He gave a sermon from Mr Parker's front door, because the congregation was too large to fit inside the house.

Wesley remarked: "It seemed the whole village was ready to receive the truth."

However, sermons were something of a novelty in Shincliffe because the village had no church.

Shincliffe historically belonged to the Priors of Durham Cathedral and was the birthplace of a 16th Century Prince Bishop of Durham called William Sever.

Despite its ecclesiastical connections, it was merely an outlying part of St Oswald's parish in Elvet.

A rectory was built in the village in 1800 and a chapel of ease opened in 1826, but Shincliffe's parish church was not built until 1851.

The church served the everincreasing population attracted by Shincliffe's railways and collieries.

From 1839, the village was home to Durham City's first railway station. Called Shincliffe Town, it was the western terminus of a line from Sunderland.

Several wagonways linked this line to neighbouring collieries. In 1844, a second station opened on a separate line at Bank Top.

Collieries were important for employment. Whitwell Colliery opened in 1836, a mile to the south-east, while to the northeast of Shincliffe, the Marquis of Londonderry's Old Durham Colliery opened in 1849, near Shincliffe Mill.

Shincliffe Colliery opened in 1839. It was located on Shincliffe Bank Top, half- a-mile south of Shincliffe.

A mining village grew up there, more than doubling the population of the area.

A later Shincliffe Colliery owner was Joseph Love, who also owned Houghall Colliery to the north. He was a former miner who married into wealth and became a coal owner.

He had a reputation for harshness and heavily fined miners he believed were not working hard enough.

Shincliffe Bank Top seems to have been a flourishing settlement, but when the colliery closed in 1875 it became a virtual ghost town.

Old Durham and Whitwell collieries also closed about this time. The population of the Shincliffes plummeted from 2,123 in 1871 to 640 by 1891.

About 300 miners were employed at Shincliffe Colliery.

Most left to seek work elsewhere.

It was unfortunate that a Methodist Chapel opened in the old village in 1874 and another opened in Bank Top in 1875, just before the population collapse.

It seemed there would now be too many churches and not enough people.

It was also unfortunate that a school at Bank Foot had opened halfway between the two villages in 1870, replacing an earlier school of the 1840s that stood near the colliery.

Despite the population, the new school served the two villages for 98 years until its closure in 1968, when a school opened at High Shincliffe.

In the last two decades of the 19th Century employment in the Shincliffe area was dominated by rural and agricultural trades, as it had been in earlier centuries.

Few miners remained, but the railways, two brickyards, a cornmill and a sawmill provided alternative employment.

Shincliffe Mill, east of Shincliffe, had been the site of a cornmill since the 1300s. It closed in 1900 and is now the site of boarding kennels.

South of Shincliffe, behind Bank Top station, stood a sawmill that closed in 1908.

Near here, to the south-west, was Shincliffe racecourse, Durham's racecourse from 1895.

It replaced a previous racecourse at Elvet but closed before the First World War.

The remains of a concrete grandstand could be seen on the edge of the old race field until quite recently.

Shincliffe's late 19th Century problems contrast with growth and prosperity in the late 20th Century.

The rural setting and proximity to Durham have made the area a popular place to live. Accessibility to the main Stockton-to-Durham road is an added attraction, but the road proved a problem as traffic increased in the 20th Century.

Vehicles originally passed through the old village, making an awkward dog-leg bend to do so. In the 1920s, Shincliffe was bypassed on its eastern side and High Shincliffe would receive a similar bypass in the 1960s.

The first modern developments in Shincliffe took place in 1960 with the building of St Mary's Close, near the church. The layout received a planning award for its design.

New estates would follow at Bank Top village in the 1960s.

At the end of the decade The Northern Echo's property pages remarked: "The price of houses may seem high - they reach the £4,500 to £6000 mark - but they are of a better type and higher class of development."

The estates at Bank Top now make up the modern village of High Shincliffe, but a few of the old colliery houses survive in the older streets, such as Pond Street, Overman Street and Quality Street.

The loss of industry from the two villages is of less concern to the two Shincliffes in this modern age of the motor car.

Few residents now work in the parish. Many are commuters with a professional background and have brought new life to the area.

Shincliffe may have started life as the "cliff of ghosts" and Bank Top may have become a temporary ghost town, but the Shincliffes of today, far from being haunted by their history are places of prosperity and proud of their past.

If you have memories of Durham including old photos or stories of people and places you would like to share with The Northern Echo, write to David Simpson, Durham Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF. E-mail David.Simpson@ nne. co. uk or telephone (01325) 505098

Published: 10/10/2003