Stathleg to Cockfield, Our Heritage…

It all began with a man called Cocca. Then came French knights, blackmailing clergymen, colliery owners, and the unwashed masses. Cockfield today is much richer for it – and much cleaner!

COCCA may have been an Anglo-Saxon who owned land.

Nothing much, only a paddock or two. The locals knew it as Cocca's Field.

Little can he have thought that, 1,400 years later, the people of Cockfield would still be poring over his footsteps.

Cocca's Field may have been on Cockfield Fell, a wonderful part of the world, which is England's largest Ancient Monument. It comprises 350 hectares of history, some of which predates Cocca himself. Much of it, though, is about railways, tramways and mines that he wouldn't have a clue about.

After Cocca's day, the Dark Ages descended. No more was heard of Cockfield until 1226 when Bishop Richard Marsh, of Durham, granted "land and waste" at Stathleg to Robert, a French knight who was living in Suffolk.

"Waste" in those days wasn't rubbish. It was simply land where no one farmed.

Robert turned up, had a look at his waste, and decided it was a "beautiful place". He called it Beaurepayr.

The locals didn't take to such foreign names. They didn't even take to the Bishop's Stathleg. To them it was still Cocca's Field, and so to them their new lord of the manor was Robert de Cockfield.

Robert built himself a manor house - Cockfield Hall - with a moat around it.

He probably assisted in the building of St Mary's Church nearby (both church and house may have already existed in some form, as nothing is new in this world).

Robert seems only to have had one daughter, Alice. In 1243, she married to John le Vavasour.

The Vavasours were a leading local family - their name is an old French legal term for a tenant of a baron -and, following the marriage, they became lords of the manor.

In 1375, the Vavasours found a place in North-East history. On a corner of Cockfield Fell, they sank a "carbonum maritimorum" - a coal mine. There were plenty of scrabbly mines in the district - little drifts or 30ft bell pits - but this appears to have been the region's first inland deep mine.

There were other deep mines, but only on the coast.

Deep mines were an expense that could be justified only if the coal could be easily sold on a lucrative market. Ships could carry coastal coal to the big cities, even London, but on Cockfield Fell - in the middle of nowhere - the market was limited.

In fact it wasn't until the arrival of the railways in 1830 that Cockfield's coal could be exploited. That exploitation caused an explosion in the population.

In 1811 there were 475 mainly agricultural workers in Cockfield. Within 20 years, there were 790. By 1861, there were 1,004. In 1891 there were 1,572, and the population peaked at 2,693 in 1921.

Such an explosion meant St Mary's needed an extension. In 1865 to 68, £1,164 5s 1d was spent raising the roof and replacing the porch.

But the explosion also caused contagion. St Mary's reopened on April 2, 1868, as typhoid raged through the village. There were more than 150 cases and about 20 deaths.

The vicar, the Reverend Harry Curteis Lipscomb, complained to the Government, which sent a sanitary inspector, Arnold Taylor, to have a look.

"The village and the land adjoining it occupy not only a high, but a very open and exposed situation, swept by every wind that blows, " reported Mr Taylor.

"As far as natural advantages are concerned, Cockfield is one of the healthiest places in the district. " Yet at least 15 per cent of the population was knocking at death's door.

"The causes of the fever are not far to seek, " said Mr Taylor. "The population of the village is chiefly made up of pitmen and their families who, as a class, are more remarkable for the neglect than the observance of the common rules of order and cleanliness.

"It will cause no surprise to learn that there is not a drain or sewer in Cockfield and that the slop water and refuse from middens and pigsties are thrown out upon and ooze away on the surfaces of the natural ground.

"There are huge collections of filth and refuse around the houses, and also there's that fruitful source of disease and immortality: excessive overcrowding of the inmates. " The village tidied up its act. The refuse was removed.

Chloride of lime was sprinkled in the ash pits. A sewer was installed for £610 10s 2d - if they'd vented it with an ornate cast iron stink pole, our joy would be unconfined.

It worked. In more healthy conditions, the population grew. By 1911, St Mary's had to enlarge once more. For £2,000, it increased its seating from 98 to 358 by adding the north aisle.

"The church is now lighted by acetlyne gas, " said The Northern Echo. "Other additions include a new reredos and oak panelling, new pulpit and a lectern of carved oak.

" This, though, was the high-water mark for both church and Cocca's village in terms of population.

THE reason the railway first came to Cockfield was because of unholy blackmail. In 1790, the Reverend William Luke Prattman, of Barnard Castle Congregational Church, married Dorothea Christina Lodge, the daughter of a wealthy Barnard Castle businessman.

The bride was the heiress to mining rights in Butterknowle. In the early 1820s, the bridgegroom became a shareholder in the new Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR).

The vicar realised the two business interests would make a perfect marriage.

In the late 1820s, he threatened the board of the S&DR that he would vote against the plans to extend the railway eastwards towards Middlesbrough unless it was also extended westwards into his wife's own Butterknowle backyard.

The S&DR had originally planned to build its line - the second branchline in the world - to Evenwood, but faced with the vicar's blackmail, the line was diverted around the foot of the fell to Butterknowle.

The Haggerleases Branchline opened in 1830.

By 1835, the vicar was exporting about 42,000 tons of coal from his Butterknowle pits. Most of it was exported via Port Darlington - now called Middlesbrough.

God, though, moves in mysterious ways. Mr Prattman ran into expensive geological problems. He decided to speculate to accumulate and took out a mortgage of £20,800 with which he sank the Diamond Pit in The Slack at the foot of Butterknowle bank, very close to the end of the Haggerleases line.

But Diamond was not lucrative, and in 1841 Mr Prattman's debts amounted to £40,000, and he was declared bankrupt.

He died in Staindrop in 1846 and it appears to have taken until 1872 for his debts to have been settled.

He still had his supporters, though, and the oration at his funeral was titled "The mantle of the departing prophet".

And eventually Diamond made a small profit, although it never employed more than 18 men.

THERE were pits and drifts everywhere. The Durham Mining Museum says that within a five-mile radius of Millfield Grange Colliery, on Cockfield Fell, there were 122 places where, in the 100 years from 1850 to 1950, coal was scrabbled out of the ground.

The big venture was Gordon House Colliery behind St Mary's Church. It was sunk in 1893, although older pits had aimed at its seams, and it peaked during the First World War when it employed more than 800.

Having joined up with Evenwood's Randolph complex during the Second World War, it closed in 1961.

Eighty miners were transferred to other pits - principally Fishburn - and 19 were made redundant.

A FEW OF THE FATALITIES THE Durham Mining Museum says 17 men died in Gordon House Colliery between 1893 and 1961.

Among them are: * James Conlin, aged 24, died May 23, 1906. He removed a "dilly-pop" - roof prop - which seems to have brought the roof down on him.

* Joseph Fuller, 49, died March 18, 1939. He was under anaesthetic while receiving treatment on a thigh he broke a month earlier when falling 20ft into a coal hopper.

* William Harrison, 69, died April 12, 1911. The sudden movement of a horse tossed him out of the cart he was standing in. He worked on for ten days, but went home feeling ill on the 11th and died of a bowel obstruction, which an inquest decided had been caused by his fall.

* Keith Pearson, 19, died June 16, 1949. He suffered multiple injuries when struck by a tub and died following an operation to amputate his arm. He had chosen mining instead of doing his two years of National Service.

* Amos Selby, 35, died May 19, 1911. The accident report said: "He was run down by a set of tubs, of which he could have had an uninterrupted view for a considerable distance; as it approached the point where he was caught it made a good deal of noise as it ran over a wood bridge; in spite of this he was seen crossing the line looking in the opposite direction, and when caught by the set was carried a distance of 30 yards and so injured that he died later in the day. "