Meet Miss Crimdon, the bank holiday beauty of the Durham coast

They have sashes, which have the names of their communities printed on them, running across their sensible summer dresses: there’s Miss Haswell and Miss Horden, Miss Wingate & Station Town and Miss Deaf Hill & Trimdon, Miss Murton & Seaham and Miss Castle Eden & Hutton Henry.

In the middle is the winner who has a special, embroidered silk sash across her chest. “Miss Crimdon”, it reads in green letters.

Miss Crimdon 1949 with the winner, Dorothy Banks, flanked by Manny Shinwell MP and his wife, Fanny

There was no greater honour in the coalfield in the 1940s and 1950s than being crowned Miss Crimdon before a crowd of up to 80,000 holidaymakers and daytrippers. The Durham Miners’ Gala, held in July, and the Miss Crimdon contest, held on the August Bank Holiday, were the bookends of the summer for the pit communities.

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The young lady – she was six weeks past her 17th birthday – who carried off the crown in 1949 was Dorothy Banks, Miss Wheatley Hill, the daughter of a co-op butcher.

“I can only imagine that because of the popularity of the event, maybe her father persuaded her to enter,” says her son, Neville Cain. “We didn’t talk about the event at all, although it was a family joke, teasing her about winning it.”

And she kept the sash, cleaned and neatly folded, so it must have meant something to her.

On the photo, she smiles rather uncertainly for the camera, clutching the envelope that contains her winnings, but perhaps she was feeling like a rose between thorns.

Because linking arms with her on her right was Manny Shinwell, the MP for Easington and the Secretary of State for War, while his wife, Fanny, holds onto her left.

Mr Shinwell looms large over the history of this remarkable event. A pugnacious Glaswegian who once punched a Conservative MP in the House of Commons and perforated his eardrum, he was first elected to represent east Durham in 1935. He was the Minister for Fuel and Power in the post-war government and oversaw the nationalisation of the mining industry in 1947.

The east Durham beauty contestants in 1969, with the new Miss Crimdon in the foreground

From the 1920s, Easington Rural District Council began developing the dene as a caravan park and beach resort. The first attractions were donkey rides on the sands but by the 1950s, it had developed into a lido with a concrete paddling pool and mini-golf course around the 1,000-seat Crimdon Pavilion hall which, from 1954, even featured its own Self-Service Snack Bar.

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There were 1,600 caravans perched on top of the denes, and capacity for holidaymakers was increased with the annual erection of temporary circular summer huts, nicknamed “beehives”. The rain must really have drummed on their wooden roofs but at least the families huddled inside the windowless teepee-like structures would have been dry.

A mid-1960s Miss Crimdon is chaired by a group of lucky lads

The Labour-run council began the beauty contest in 1937 to promote the lido.

It organised at least 13 heats in towns and villages across its area. These were held in working men’s clubs and welfare halls, and local councillors and dignitaries selected their local lovely, from entrants as young as 13, to go forward to the Miss Crimdon contest.

It seems that Mr Shinwell himself selected the overall winner.

As Memories 588 told last year, the Wheatley Hill History Club’s website features a video of the 1960 contest which was again won by Miss Wheatley Hill, Sally Fleetham. The video includes Mr Shinwell’s speech to the huge crowd in which he accepts that even in its early days, both the pageant and the lido had their opponents.

Sally Fleetham, the Miss Crimdon of 1960, featured on calendars after her success

“At that time, there was a great deal of criticism,” said Mr Shinwell, who had flown up from London with his wife specially for the occasion, “but you have the answer to such criticism here today in this great and glorious concourse of ordinary men and woman and their families, who have come to enjoy themselves at one of the finest beauty spots in the United Kingdom.”

He said the event was a “wonderful workers’ demonstration with nothing aristocratic about it. Here, in my constituency and the surrounding area, we have the finest beauties in any part of the country”.

The Miss Crimdon in 1966 - Mrs Margaret Cook, 21, of Easington Colliery - was moved to tears of joy by her victory

However, in 1997, an extraordinary political controversy blew up when the Earl of Carlisle, who had stood unsuccessfully for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in Easington in 1987, alleged in a speech about electoral reform in the House of Lords that Mr Shinwell “fixed the contest and chose the daughters, wives or girlfriends of Labour councillors”.

The earl said that therefore most of the winners were “rather ugly’’.

Margaret Petch who won the Miss Crimdon title in 1973

There was outrage in east Durham where the good looks of the womenfolk had been besmirched. The earl was forced to apologise and he said his light-hearted remarks had been taken out of context. He invited all former Miss Crimdons to join him for strawberries and cream on the terrace at the Houses of Parliament, and added: “I certainly didn’t mean to offend any of the ladies involved. The two I have seen pictures of certainly looked very pretty.’’

The father of Dorothy Banks, our 1949 winner, doesn’t seem to have had any political connections. Dorothy followed him into the Wheatley Hill co-op where she met her future husband, James Cain, who worked in the grocery department, delivering items to customers in the pit villages with his horse and cart. They married in 1952. James’s uncle was Teddy Cain, a well known Labour activist having been elected as a councillor in 1934 and working alongside Peter Lee, but to draw a link with Dorothy’s success three years before her marriage is stretching the Earl of Carlisle’s conspiracy theory much too far.

Miss Crimdon Dene 1983, Michelle Horn, centre, Lynne Allison, left, who was runner-up and Karen Michelle Hamilton, who was third.

Mr Shinwell, a major figure in Labour politics for most of his 101 years, stood down as Easington MP in 1970, and by the end of the 1980s, times were changing.

In 1989, Miss Peterlee was cancelled when only three girls put their names forward, and in 1991, the Echo reported that there were only 39 entrants for the nine remaining heats. As the final at Crimdon Dene in August was due to cost £12,110, the council switched it to Peterlee Leisure Centre in October to save £6,400.

This, after 54 years, turned out to be the last Miss Crimdon contest. It was won by Andrea Robinson, who had won the title in 1988, and it looks like the Labour Party had a hold over it to the end: we believe she was presented with the winner’s sash by a young MP called Tony Blair who, just like Manny Shinwell all those years earlier, was accompanied by his wife, Cherie.

A reunion of former Miss Crimdons was held in 2004, and included, from left, Andrea Robinson, the last Miss Crimdon in 1991, and Louise Allen, Pat Jamieson and Michelle Horn

• If you have any stories or memories of a Miss Crimdon contest, we’d love to hear from you. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
• To see the 1960 video of the Miss Crimdon contest, go to wheatley-hill.org.uk
• With thanks to Margaret Hedley and Neville Cain

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