Jack Elliot songs
Recording of "Songs and stories of a Durham miner", on Leader LP: songs - little chance, broken tanner and Jacks choice, the unlucky duck, brooms reel and rakes of mallow, lassie would ye love me?, the silent budgie, golden slippers and poor black Joe, the blind fool, the man with no watch, the herrings head, rap her to bank, jap jowl and listen lad, farewell to the cotia, the rowan tree, the banks of the dee, parable of the lost shekels, Irish washerwoman and father o'flynn, the old man, on yon bottle bank, just before the battle mother, my old man, Stanley market, paddy mcginty's goat, highl...

Durham miners gala
Durham Miner's Gala with John Elliot. This should be after 60a but may not be.

tour of Durham
Valerie Singleton and Tim Matthews guide a visitor around the north east

various
Many songs - performed by John and Elsie Nettleton, Ian Lore, Tom and Steve Fry, Ian Love, Staple Sound, Colin Ross, Alan Fitzsimmons, Phil Ranson, Waifs and Strays, Richard Hill, Carol Hill, Bob Fleming, Keith Davidson, Bob Cullan, Alistair Anderson, Tina Fry, Spindlestone, Paul Brady - see card for details of which is which. Andrew Bird of Dunston-Davies' challenge. Whinham's reel, Lambshaw's fancy, lamb skinnet, weel may the keel row, a fish and a pennorth, aa tuk the wife oot campin, a greet big oven pie, ha'll nivva cum t'toon agyen, a georgie for me, Billy boy. The Geordie palan, dinnet ...

Miss Turner
Worked as a colliery clerk in the colliery office, and shorthand typist. Bus services to get to work. House lived in, and garden. Once went down into the pit - gives an outsiders impressions of it, got very dirty, hewed a tiny piece of coal, felt sorry for the ponies, nearly had an accident as stood in the wrong place, had to go in the bath; remembered the cage and the path at the bottom. Worked out bills and wages - how much they had earned, and then all the deductions - fines, subscriptions, coal etc. Priest and doctor paid for from wages. Describes the colliery office. Typed up notes for Co...

Mr Bell
Durham in the 1920s - Peter Lee and the birth of the labour party. Early labour developments in road building and housing and work creation schemes to help people qualify for dole money. Lived in Chopwell; the image as "little red Moscow". Strike of 1926 and the imprisonment of good people who got involved, religious people. Union leaders etc reading in philosophy and working class history. Changes now - people do council jobs for the money; Durham gala as it was, now more a "pop festival". Housing association.

Mr Hall
Miner who was a champion sausage eater, his troubles with his wife. Accidental giving of very high pay. Coal mining, putting and hewing. Became log secretary, accident triggered nightmares. Durham Miner's Association. Depression and strikes of 1921 and 1926; railwaymen breaking the strike, Ramsey MacDonald. War minister predicting holidays in the Mediterranean. Colliery managers playing with other men's wives, community responses to adultery. Blackshirts. Wanting to not have a colliery house. Diseases from mining. Closing colliery "to keep Reds out". Colliery doctors. Lamps. Dislike of the str...

Mr Sherwood
Social distinctions and relationships between ordinary miners, deputies and overman. Moving up the ranks. Welsh miners. Room in the pub nicknamed "the fat beast" because it was used by "the management's side". Characteristics of a good deputy - different skills needed in different pit districts and conditions. Mining equipment. Sorting out pay disputes between clerks, overmen, miners etc. Happy when the pit head baths came in and could go home clean. 1926 strike, enjoyed it, soup kitchens. Joined the army and realised Durham miner's condition of living worse than those in other places. Those w...

J. Agar
Introduction of margarine in 1909. Tobacco, different kinds, could save coupons for a watch. Brother a colliery post boy. Local tramps. Getting a gramophone. Strike of 1921, diet, pig killing. Father came from ironstone mines in Yorkshire. Village previously "Esh New Winning". Starting in the pit, darkness there. Village women helping with nursing. Brother came back in a cart after broke his leg in the mine. Funerals - blinds pulled down along the street, verse on a memorial card. The annual show, trying to get in, different things there. Aeroplanes came to show and on British tour, pre world ...

Mr and Mrs Burrows
Lord Joicey donated a peal of bells to St Andrews church and Mrs B's mother involved in fundraising for church tower. Bishop of Durham's hat pushed in the river during Durham Gala. Chapel life on Annfield Plain. Church of England

Mr Morris
Differences between Morrison pit in the 30s and Beamish Mary in the 50s. Working with a pushcart for Mrs Rowe of Stanley - pay, prices, commission. 11 plus and process of selection for grammar school depending on how well dressed. Mother's sister married an Italian with ice cream business in Easington. Irish grandparents, went to America and then to Durham. Animosity between Protestants and Catholics.

compilation tape
extracts from - Norah Renny on working as farm servant (Cockermouth accent); Charles Armstrong on his farm (Elsdon); Richard Common on Wall send (Wall send); Tom Holmes on childhood games (Hetton le Hole, Durham)

Mr Peter Talbot
Work of family during and after world war one. First shift down the mine. Lights went out and sat in the dark. Religious beliefs. Hand putting. Pay and reductions. 1926 strike - soup kitchens and survival. Explosives and accidents. Relationship between bosses and men. Conditions and pay in different pits. Unions. Jack Lawson. School. World war two - rationing and food. Workhouse. Grandmother's death. 1914 world was one and blackout. Durham Miners gala. Sideshows. Games - skipping, marbles, kicky cat, pitchy up to the mott, social life. Catching trout and killing lambs. Food at fish shop. Singi...

Terry Hutchinson
Grandfather went to live with a poacher at 13, in a bothy, until poacher died. Then he got fined for cycling without a light. Northumbrian dialect, different language for counting. Great grandparents lived in old "Stanton house". Grandfather violin playing in a band. First met grandmother when fell off his bike near where she was a maid. Aunt's husband beat her for not having soap in, grandmother beat him with a poker for it. Grandfather in a charabanc accident. He was Catholic, she wasn't. Mother's sister married father's brother. Stepmother insisted on chapel marriage, upset the priest. War ...

Mr Harrison
Family. School. Bee keeping at Langley Park, helped father. Honey sold to shops in Durham. Allotments, house. Worked for Boots the chemist before and after national service. Married in 1959. 1971 made redundant from Berwick upon Tweed branch of Boots. Started a grocery business at St Helens near Bishop Auckland. Delivering school meals. North Eastern Council of Grocers.

Mr Rowells
Colliery work - ventilation. Landseal pit. Pontop and Jarrow railway. Houses in Kibblesworth. Drift mine. School, lessons, games, football. Walking to Durham. Shifts in the pit. Pay. Flood in 1912. 1926 strike. Pit life during the strike. Parish relief. Aged miners homes and the giving of coals. Auditors. Colliery office. Lamp system, filling tubs. Breeding bantams. Waiting to be called up in world war one, on reserve list, posting to in India. How parents got together.

radio "age to age"
"Age to Age", about Beamish museum - with Peter Lewis, Frank Atkinson, Martin Gallagher, George Muirhead, Rosemary Allan and Lloyd Langley - discussion of the Durham mining life and working practices. Pitmatic dialect. The pub and Methodists. Accidents and the Stanley disaster.