Surroundings changed with end of the pits (From Durham Times)

Surroundings changed with end of the pits

12:08pm Friday 24th July 2009

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LITTLETOWN came into being as a pit village following the opening of its colliery in 1831, but it never grew to the extent of neighbouring colliery villages like High Pittington and Sherburn Hill.

There was one chapel, a pub and only a handful of colliery streets to house the miners.

The most northerly street was Moor View Cottages, once the home to colliery officials and still standing today.

These houses stood apart from four other colliery terraces that formed a quadrangle at the heart of the village.

Here was Cross Street on the east side (leading to the chapel), Pit Row at the north near the colliery, Front Street facing out west across the main road towards Littletown House and Long Row at the south.

A large green field that effectively forms a village green now marks the site of these streets. If we face across the field towards the old chapel, we can imagine Front Street on the left alongside the main road and Cross Street on the right where there is now nothing more than a farm track leading to the chapel.

Rather strangely, this old track is still referred to as Cross Street on some modern maps, but there are no longer any houses.

All the old colliery terraces have gone. Plantation Avenue, which now houses most of Littletown’s population is a street of mid-20th century semi-detached houses built on the site of the former colliery terrace that was called Long Row in the 1850s and later referred to as Long Street.

At the corner of Long Street and the main road from Pittington to Haswell Plough stands the former Duke of York pub.

Littletown’s first pub had been The Moor Hen and was in existence by the 1850s.

One of its last publicans was Matthew Hepburn, who was listed in a directory in 1894.

It was in that year that The Moor Hen was superseded by the newly-built Duke of York, a little further along the road to the east.

Three years after it was built, a trade directory states that the landlord of the Duke of York was Matthew Hepburn who clearly moved there from the earlier pub, which is no longer mentioned.

During this period, the Littletown colliery manager was Wheldon Hepburn, who was presumably a relative of the publican.

It was certainly not uncommon for publicans to be connected with the local mines.

The Duke of York continued to operate as a pub until quite recently, but it became a guest house in more recent times called Littletown Lodge.

A little farther to the south along the road from the former pub once stood yet another colliery terrace called Heather View. It was built later in the 19th century than the other terraces in the village and was separated from the Duke of York and the rest of the village by a school that stood in between. This was the Littletown Colliery School of 1874 and was built by the Earl of Durham.

You might think that glorious heather moorland could be viewed across the road from Heather View and the school but for most of their life both looked out directly onto nothing more than the monstrous Sherburn Hill pit heap. The lower slopes of the heap were just across the road from the school and it was perhaps precariously close in view of the disaster that beset the Welsh village of Aberfan in October 1966 when a pit heap collapsed onto the village and killed 116 children.

Sherburn Hill Colliery itself had closed only the year before this terrible event. In the interests of safety and scenery, the Sherburn Hill heap was removed in 1969- 70. It had been as much a feature of Littletown’s landscape as it was of Sherburn Hill. It had filled the countryside on the east side of the road that linked the two villages.

After a heavy snowfall, the heap resembled an Alpine mountain and its height was such that views stretched out to sea from its summit.

After the removal of the pit heap, Heather View and the school did not live to enjoy their newly uninterrupted view of the surrounding scenery for very long, as both were demolished during the 1970s.

The Littletown Colliery Institute of 1907 was also pulled down during this decade of demolition.

Situated near the pub, it once housed a reading room and billiard tables and was inscribed with the words “Lambton Collieries Littletown Colliery Institute” above the door.

These were by no means the earliest demolitions in the village. Front Street was pulled down shortly before this time, so that all that was left of the village were better quality houses in Moor View Cottages and Plantation Avenue, as well as the pub and the old Wesleyan chapel.

The closure of Sherburn Hill pit, where many local miners worked, was a factor in the changes taking place at Littletown.

Littletown Colliery itself had closed long before, back in 1914, and Sherburn Hill’s colliery closure only served to emphasise the decay at Littletown.

In fact, in the sixties and seventies, Littletown wasn’t perceived as a particularly desirable place to live.

“Littletown isn’t a pretty place,” wrote The Northern Echo reporter who made a visit in 1967, further remarking that people in neighbouring villages referred to it as the lost city.

However, following the demolitions, the attraction of what remained was increasingly clear. Despite its lack of amenities, Littletown’s lovely rural setting was quite clear and plans were put forward in 1985 for the building of 30 new houses opposite the Duke of York.

However, some people in this village were opposed to the plan and asserted their desire to remain little and Littletown, though by no means a town, still lives up to part of its name.

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