Butterknowle a stroll down Butterknowl Lane. by Nicholas Wilson

Transcription

1 Butterknowle a stroll down Butterknowl Lane by Nicholas Wilson Coal has been a fact of life in the Gaunless Valley for centuries. In Butterknowle developments date from the activities of the Reverend Luke Prattman who inherited the Butterknowle and Copley Collieries through his wife. (1) He was ambitious but did not have a smooth ride: by 1841 he was bankrupt. The collieries survived but production levels which had been 42,000 tons average in 1831 were reduced to 16,974 tons by 1848, climbing again to 36,450 tons in By 1896 the Butterknowle Coal Company Limited administered: Diamond Pit [18 employed] Quarry Pit Main Seam [167 employed] The Gordon pumping station [3 employed] Quarry Pit Five Quarter Seam [115 employed] Hutton Seam Drift [94 employed] Wham [131 employed]. (2) This is 528 employees in mining alone. Additionally there were the railways, the brickworks and the coke ovens as well as tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen etc. Whellan s Directory of 1894 (3) gives population figures for Lynesack and Softley township [which included a portion of Woodlands (sic), the whole of Butterknowle, Copley Lane, Lynesack, Southside and Wham] as 517 in 1801; 602 in 1811; 732 in 1821; 795 in 1831; 910 in 1841; 787 in 1851; 1,386 in 1871; 2,349 in 1881; 2,835 in

2 1891. Thus in 90 years the population increased nearly sixfold. Between 1871 and 1881 the population nearly doubled. In 1885 a branch of the Bishop Auckland Co op opened in Butterknowle and moved five years later into more spacious premises. (1) Clearly it was doing well. It was presumably regarded by the people of the village as a good thing and so it was for about 20 years. In 1904, however, the Co op took the Coal Company to court citing damage to its buildings by subsidence and won a singularly pyrrhic victory. The Coal Company went into liquidation to avoid paying compensation and the Co op failed to recover its costs. The effect was unemployment and the beginning of the end for coal mining. Workings continued in what sounds like a sporadic fashion until 1950 (2) but clearly the basis of the raison d etre of Butterknowle was fading. What, then, happened to the village? During our stroll we shall try to see. The Ordnance Survey sheet of 1857 (4) shows Butterknowl Lane running roughly west to east along the same line as the present day main street. Features marked include, from the west, Bracken Hill, Butterknowl Colliery, Grewburn Mill, Black Diamond Colliery and not much else. By 1898 (5) there have been added Bleak House, Royal Oak Inn, Miners Hall, P.O., another Inn and Methodist Chapel. Butterknowl Colliery has vanished and Black Diamond Colliery has become Diamond Pit. Beyond Butterknowl Lane there are The Slack, not previously named, Brick Works, Gordon Pit, Haggerleases Station, Gaunless Mill [replacing Grewburn Mill] and the Stag s Head Inn. Newcomers in 1924 (6) are West View, The Institute, the School in its present position, Diamond Terrace and Stone Row [marked but not named on the previous sheet] and another P.H. towards The Slack. On all the sheets

3 there are big gaps, notably between West View and the Royal Oak on the north side of the street and, on the south side, the area opposite West View and the stretch between Bleak House and The Miners Hall. Whellan s Directory (3) mentions as features of Butterknowle as a whole: the Church built in 1848 to seat 260, the Primitive Methodist Chapel at South Side built in 1876 to seat 530 and the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Butterknowle built in 1878 to seat 300 [which results in accommodation for 1,090 worshippers suggesting either great piety or great optimism]; four Schools including by name the National School at Lynesack with space for 300 pupils and the British School at Quarry Lane with space for 80 as well as an infant school at Haggerleases attended by about 80; the Miners Hall which could take 4450 and was the largest public hall in the district; the Institute and Library [which is recorded here but not on the map of 1898]. Mr. Whellan also notes five pubs in Butterknowle the Surtees Arms, the Sun inn, the Oak Tree (sic), the Diamond Inn and the Stag s Head with another four the Old Engine Inn, the Black Swan, the Malt Shovel and the Three Horse Shoes not far away. This seems to suggest an interesting tension between Methodism, selfimprovement and the demon drink. The Reverend J. Burbridge (7) author of My Friend the Collier has a few sharp words in this direction: the collier, he decides, is a splendid fellow but only if he behaves himself. There s none on earth to degrade thee, If thou dost not thyself degrade.

4 We may thus assume that Butterknowle in the latter part of the nineteenth century was noisy, dirty, smelly and prosperous. What of today? We shall begin our stroll down Butterknowl Lane at the top. West View and here we strike a complication straight away as the simplicity and convenience for postmen of a single name has gone. We will find apart from West View Front Street, Tilley s Row, Memorial Cottages, Pinfold Lane, Salterburn Place, Liddle Avenue, North View, Victoria Cottages and very probably more. The Village Hall alone has four assumed addresses and most of its mail is delivered to a fifth. But we digress. There is recognisable evidence of development in Butterknowl Lane. Modern housing has filled the gaps showing on the 1924 map except for the area opposite West View and a large splendid Village Hall has appeared more or less opposite Bleak House. The Hall was opened in 1962, the Trustees of the Association having purchased the land on which it stands for the princely sum of d. [three hundred pounds and eleven shillings]. In today s terms this would roughly equate to 4,000. Foundation stones to commemorate the building of the Hall were laid by Mr. J.A. Makepeace and Mr. T.W. Nightingale. In 2000 the Village Hall received a lottery grant from the community fund of 125,595 for extensive refurbishment (8). In an echo of the Miners Hall, the Village Hall is now the probably the largest community building in the district. The predecessor of the Village Hall was the Memorial Hall further down the Lane on the south side. It began life after World War 1 as the Social Service Centre, in which

5 incarnation it was visited by Royalty, and survives despite its timber construction as a joiner s workshop. The Miners Hall also survives, a little further up the Lane, as a warehouse for an animal feed business. Agricultural interests have thus asserted themselves over mining, not that agriculture ever went away. Mining villages in Northumberland Ashington, say or Pegswood had a distinct architectural character, the pit being surrounded by long rows of small terraced houses such as may be seen at Beamish Open Air Museum. My brother in law lives in such a terrace, though it will soon be pulled down, and his house number is 423, which gives you some idea. Butterknowle, with the possible exceptions of Diamond Terrace and Stone Row, which are pretty short compared with Pegswood, did not evolve in this way as a significant number of colliery workers combined mining with farming smallholdings, which seems a tall order. The 1851 census (1) found 76 men in Group 1 [Agricultural] and 52 men in Group 5a [Industrial Workers, Coal Mining]. Also in this group appeared 15 men described as farmers and coal miners and 2 described as farmers and colliery banksmen. [We may speculate as to who decided on the order and thus the priority occupation]. This meant that Butterknowle remained a scattered community with the Lane as its core. Today s appearance retains the nineteenth century shape with, of course certain missing features.

6 Pit workings, visible at the bottom of the Lane have almost vanished while the Coop, the Methodist Chapel and the Institute have given way to housing. Now, of the 96 buildings facing Butterknowl Lane 33 are, even to an untrained eye, recognisably late twentieth century houses, 56 are older houses, 5 are commercial premises, 1 is a Doctors surgery and 1 is the modern Village Hall. Thus some 30% of the housing stock has been built since the decline of mining but commercial activity has been considerably reduced. There is one remaining shop. More cheeringly, the Royal Oak and the Diamond Inn survive and prosper Butterknowle was in a state of dereliction according to a Ministry of Labour report (1). In 2002 Lynesack was one of five core targeted wards in Teesdale and an Appraisal was conducted by Teesdale District Council (9). One of the questions, was What do you like about the environment in which you live? These were the responses: the open views, space, fresh air; knowing neighbours and familiar faces; countryside and wildlife; quiet rural area; lovely working in village; it s clean, beautiful and friendly; lack of traffic; buildings conform to rural style, minimal litter; not too far from town; nothing to like; nice village but very anti social*; peaceful and friendly; open space, fresh air, and good people. *Only one questionnaire described the village as unfriendly and anti social. The vast majority replied to the question and most of the above comments reflect the mainstay of opinion. [Taken from pp25 and 26]. 689 questionnaires were sent out and 103 were returned.

7 Space? Fresh air? Quiet? Lack of traffic? Peaceful? Would our predecessors on Butterknowl Lane recognise any of this? Sources and Acknowledgments 1. Butterknowle in Department of Adult and Continuing Education, Durham University, 1983/4 2. Gaunless Valley History Trust Whellan, F.S. History, Topography and Directory of. County Durham. 2nd ed., Ordnance Survey Sheet Ordnance Survey Sheet XLI Durham SW Ordnance Survey Sheet XLI Durham SW Burbridge, Rev. J. My Friend the Collier from Walker s Golden Reciter Wm. Walker & Sons (Otley) Ltd

8 8. Butterknowle Village Hall Community Appraisals for the Core Targeted Wards in Teesdale Teesdale District Council. Grateful thanks for the supply of materials and guidance are due to: Jeanette Newell Harold Simpson, Million Makepeace Ian and Linda Ayres, Sheila Todd, Barbara Note: The views that are expressed on the website are the contributors own and not necessarily those of Durham County Council. This is a community website so no guarantee can be given of the historical accuracy of individual contributions