Off for a walk down Easington Colliery seaside Lane to the Shops… Saturday afternoon and everywhere is almost closed. #exploring #abandoned #buildings #northeast #property
Thank you for caring about our little Colliery, i grew up in the B streets until I was 22 then i moved into a flat in seaside lane. There's is still a trip switch box inside thst has a little bit of masking tape saying BINGO in the doorway. I always loved it because it was a little bit of history in my home.
Sad to see a place decline so much.On a bigger scale,I went to Bishop Auckland a few weeks ago and the main street,Newgate St had shopfronts dropping to bits or boarded up.As a kid we walked up and down this street with Grandparents,it was thriving.Lack of people also made it feel like a ghost town.
Classy and emphatic video Terry about the urbanization/globalization effects that destroy many parts of Europe and the US. It's very hard to reverse these long trends and maybe some future re-opening of the coal industry can bring back life to the likes of Easington & Horden.
So glad you are feeling better Terry. Yes, it is sad to see the area like that. The Northern Powerhouse - when is that going to happen? Not anytime soon! (Ha ha! I remember my father saying Walter Wilson's watery tea). Even though it was sad, thank you for the walk. P.S. Lost sound at about 16:05.
Great film but sad. Me and some other lads from Notts NUM stayed in Easington for weekend of Durham Miners Gala and were made welcome. Its great that the Gala ( The Big Meeting) is still thriving and growing all these years since the last Durham pit, Wearmouth, shut down. I imagine, like most pits, there are millions of tons of good quality coal left behind. Since the coal has been abandoned we have become dependent on foreign energy and the risks and high prices for consumers that comes with it. Scargill warned this would happen back in the early 1980's. Since the late 1970s we have had the technology to burn coal cleanly in power stations using a technology called Fluidised Bed Combustion which collects 99% of the emissions at source by burning it on limestone. This was proved at Grimethorpe experimental power station until that too was closed by Thatcher. I agree with the comments regarding dumping colliery waste at sea. That should have been stopped years before the coastal pits shut. At inland colleries the waste was tipped on land and then grassed over and trees planted on them as well. Looking forward to this weekend as we are back again for the Big Meeting in Durham where a large crowd of Easington folk will be along with the Easington NUM Lodge banner and band will be with over 100,000 other like minded folks. If you don't believe me see for yourself by either attending ( always 2nd Saturday in July) and/or look for Durham Miners Gala on youtube.
Hi Terry, loved your video, my wife was bought up in Easington, Seaside Lane, mentioned this to you in a previous video that you did. Her parents owned a coffee shop in the early 60's Millar's Coffee Bar, she seems to think that it was the Cafe that you mentioned in this video, their place was next to the Hippodrome Picture House. The chip shop that you mentioned, when my wife was living there, the lady who owned it then only had one arm, she also sold vegatables. Her Gran used to live in Bourne Street. Christine my wife said how sad it was at how much it had changed from her childhood days living there, can barely remember it now.
Hiya, i moved to Peterlee when i was 12 years old. Worked in Horden at a factory called Maybelts when i was 16. On a Saturday night we used to go to Easington grey hound stadium ....loved it. I never liked maggie thatcher and the conservatives....and never will. I remember at about 13 years of age collecting beach coal from Horden beach and dragging it up the beach banks with the sack over the frame of my bike;. I don't know how the mines could have carried on dumping millions of tonnes of mine waste into the sea....it was an environmental disaster and was recorded as the most poluted areas in the word. That said all the hard working miners didn't stand a chance.......my heart goes out to you guys.......brave men who risked their lives every day........i moved up north when i was 12 from leicestershire......we were poor too and i never wanted to go there. I now have a good career back in Leicestershire but one thing i will never forget is the straight talking and the kindness of the north east people.
At one time you could buy anything In Easington, as a child I remember Walter Wilson’s, Robinsons the news agent with all the toys in the window opposite. It had two cinemas, six fish shops, very sad to see it’s decline
Not just pit closeups I come from medway Kent and when thatcher and Co closed Chatham dockyard that put 3.500 men out of work witch affected 3 towns Gillingham Chatham Strood and 4 factory's closed that used too supply the yard each employed 7/9 hundred men and women each the steele industry closing did not help the pits
@@Madsoutandabout not just jobs hole community's bad housing Brough me up this end of the country I had 35 years living in flats in medway nothing but burgalrys drugs punchups the flats I lived in had benches outside 13 year old were dealing cochineal to each other before going to school every corner every pub or McDonald's you can buy cocaine it's better up here
It’s al down to Maggie closing the pits down and killing the community. Hetton is just the same. Heartbreaking for all these mining villages and mining families.
@Madsoutandabout He was my dad but my parents had divorced years before he moved to Easington Colliery. I visited my dad on occasion and he would be swearing his head off. He remarried some fat lady from Norfolk. His church organist Percy used to play the wrong tune or start playing the organ during my dad's sermon.
@Madsoutandabout Percy used to play the wedding march for a funeral so I heard. A girl in my class went to church and mentioned that her vicar smoked, swore, got drunk and was barred from nearly every pub except the Miner's Welfare Club.
The Tory party executed Easington Colliery. No political party of any persuasion has sought to resurrect it. Places that thrive have an aspirational feeling to them, Easington’s corpse is at the opposite end of the scale. I was brought up in Easington and lived there for 28 years until after the pits were closed. I then became part of the diaspora who left looking for work. Here is my off the cuff thoughts for getting it up off it’s feet. 1. Easington people need to spend their money in Easington, not elsewhere. Creating a demand for goods and services will help attract investment. 2. Where the schools have been demolished, put a major supermarket chain outlet with generous parking. 3. Demolish Seaside lane, grass over where all the shops had stood and plant many attractive flowering trees. 4. Demolish School street and create an area that flows into the open land between the schools area and the land between the Central club ( is it still called that?) and North. 5. Develop this area with smaller attractive shop outlets similar to an out of town retail park. 6. As the use of these shopping areas grows, demolish North and construct a housing mix and layout the same as Easington Village. The Village is a Jewel in East Durham. It’s a winning housing formula. People WANT to live there. Just copy it. 7. Rejuvenate the Welfare ground. Make it a place families and dog walkers want to go and spend time. Open it out into this new nucleus in Easington colliery. 8 As time goes by repeat with the demolition of South and East that is beyond any beneficial improvement. 9. I probably should have put this first. Put a 24 hour manned police station at the centre of all of this , with police on patrol 24/7. Easington Colliery has sunk so low that without this and a Zero tolerance for crime, all the above is pointless. 10. Turn Boots the Chemist back to being a Chemists and stop it being a methadone fountain for addicts. The Methadone must be supplied from a point way out of sight and in a place that keeps that clientele far away from this nucleus. Say down at the trust. 11. Create all sorts of voluntary groups , sports groups, social groups. The local authority should be tasked with this . If some already exist make those bigger. No excuses. People have to start taking an interest and ownership of where they live. 12. Put someone in charge of this, pay them well ONLY on the basis of what the locals can see and feel as improvements. It’s not rocket science. I live in a place , population about 20,000, that face similar problems in the early 90’s , when the major employer went bust. They picked themselves up . The place is like living in a corner of paradise. It can be done, but the right person has to make that first step on the journey. Is there a savour out there?
Hmmm....i agree with some of your thoughts. However what needs to be done is Durham County Council to STOP accepting reprobates from other local authorities to house them for financial gain.
It's so true, Easington's actually a lovely little village with access to the Durham coastal path :) They should have cafes etc for walkers on the beach, I wandered in having walked from Blackhall Rocks through to Easington and there was nowhere to stop and rest
Is it really a decline though considering that this area used to be a total enviromental disaster and now it's a beautiful green nature reserve. Depends how you look at things I guess. People who talk about reopening the mines are out of their freaking minds. There's more to life than shops and bustling streets. Communities are things of the past too. Now everybody minds their own business and thank god for that.
