HUNDREDS of people converged on the site of the former Easington Colliery to celebrate the area's mining history.

The family event at Easington Local Nature Reserve featured live music from traditional colliery bands and singers with children’s crafts, and activities.

A traditional miners’ banner parade was accompanied by music from Easington Colliery Brass Band.

Festival organiser Michelle Harland, from Seaham-based Creative Youth Opportunities CIC, said: “The Easington Miners’ Picnic was a celebration of the community and an opportunity to bring together people across the generations to explore what Easington means to them."

The event, which featured folk singer Jez Lowe, was supported by the National Trust as part of the national People's Landscapes programme.

Festival organiser Michelle Harland from Creative Youth Opportunities CIC said: “The Easington Miners’ Picnic is a celebration of the community and an opportunity to bring together people across the generations to explore what Easington means to them.

“As well as commemorating Easington’s mining heritage and educating younger generations about the history of the village, the festival is an opportunity to look forward and celebrate the wonderful and unique natural landscape that has emerged from Country Durham’s industrial past.”

The event is supported by the National Trust as part of the national People's Landscapes programme which explores the hidden histories of beautiful landscapes. On the Durham Coast, the National Trust is working with the community, partners and artists to explore the area’s industrial and social heritage, and how people’s actions and events have helped shape the landscape of the Durham Heritage Coast.

Eric Wilton, General Manager for the National Trust Durham Coast said: “We look after five miles of the dramatic Durham coastline which has emerged from its industrial past to become a haven for wildlife, including wildflowers and rare butterflies.

“Once home to one of the biggest coal mines in Europe, at Easington, the former ‘black beaches’ were transformed by a massive clean-up project, ‘Turning the Tide’ in the 1990s, but this landscape has been shaped by social as well as environmental change.

“Through the People’s Landscapes programme we’re working with the local community to explore the area’s industrial heritage and residents’ evolving relationships with the coast.”

The National Trust is working with film and photography collective Amber to host special events during 2019 to mark key moments in the history of the area and look at life during and after the closure of Easington Colliery and the resulting clean-up effort. A new poem, written by poets in residence Phoebe Power and Katrina Porteous, on the environmental transformation of the Durham Coastline will be debuted as part of the Durham Book Festival.

As part of the People’s Landscapes programme, the National Trust have also released a new podcast presented by Terry Deary, author of the Horrible Histories books, looking at Easington, and the community’s relationship with the National Trust when they came to help clear up their beach after the closure of the mine. The episodes can be found here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/peoples-landscapes/id1475110464