THE Durham Miners' Gala has gone from being a dying event in the Nineties to a spectacle that attracts people in the sort of numbers it enjoyed when the county still had working pits.

Each year sees more banners paraded as communities track down lodge standards and restore them or commission new ones based on past designs reflecting the post-mining era.

Bowburn last paraded its banner in 1967, shortly before the village's colliery was closed, but a group of villagers is determined that Bowburn will be among the throng at this year's Big Meeting.

Monday is the inaugural meeting of Bowburn Banner Group, which aims to raise about £27,000 to restore the existing banner that dates from 1959 and to create a new banner featuring a new design on one side and on the other side the image of a 1919 banner.

Next year marks the 100th anniversary of Bowburn Colliery's decline and the group's formation comes at a time when the village is looking to the future with plans for a regeneration scheme.

Durham City councillor Mike Syer, steering group secretary, said the 1919 banner was unusual because it depicted not leading union nor Labour movement figures but Edith Cavell, the British nurse who was executed by the Germans during the First World War for allegedly helping prisoners to escape.

That design will feature on the new banner and on the other side will be a design to be agreed through a community project involving local schoolchildren, ex-miners and their families.

Coun Syer said: "The later banner is unique because on both sides it features aerial views. One is of the Durham Racecourse on Gala day and the other is of the miners' convalescent home at Conishead Priory in Cumbria."

He said the banner, which is in the offices of the Colliery Officials and Staffs Association in Mansfield, is in better condition than one would expect, but will need a conservator to do the work.

The group hopes to raise funds itself and has grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

The banners will be kept at the community centre in cases made from wooden pews of Christ the King Church that closed last year.

The meeting is at 7.30pm in Bowburn Community Centre in Durham Road. The group has planned a fundraising brass concert by the Reg Vardy Band, formerly the Ever Ready Band, in the community centre on Friday, February 25, details to be finalised.