ON a sunny day, it can look one of the most picturesque places, tranquil even.

But the hills of the Derwent Valley, whose main town Consett was famed for its steelworks, has a turbulent and bloody past that is recounted in a new book, The Dark Side of the Dale - The Grim, Grisly and Gruesome History of the Derwent Valley.

Northern Echo journalist Tony Kearney, Consett born and bred, has spent the past five years researching the 2,000-year history of the Derwent Valley through to Victorian times, concentrating on warfare, rebellion, murder and strife.

The exploits of conquerors and raiders are recounted, such as The Celts, Romans, Vikings and Normans, along with the violence that accompanied the area's industrialisation in the 1840s when coal and iron-making drew labourers from the land.

"I think it is the first time that anyone has attempted to look at the entire history of the entire valley since the 19th Century,'' said Mr Kearney.

"It isn't a history book - an academic history - it is a book about history. It is an entertainment.

"I think a book about the grim, grisly and gruesome end of things will appeal to people more than a history full of kings, queens and dates.''

He believes that Consett and the surrounding area has always had an air of the "frontier town" about it, particularly when migrants from across England and Ireland came to earn a living at the steelworks and spent their spare time fighting each other.

Coal mining, too, was a source of much conflict and the South Medomsley strike of 1855 - made famous in song by the pitman poet Tommy Armstrong - illustrates the forces ranged against miners fighting for better pay or conditions.

After striking over the mine company's decision to cut their lower-then-average wages by ten per cent, they were thrown out of their company homes by "candymen" guarded by the police.

Eleven families - men, women and children malnourished after two months with no pay - were left to fend for themselves in several inches of snow.

In a letter to a newspaper, lawyer's clerk Samuel Longstaffe described it as a cruelty "of which even an autocratic despot like the Czar of Russia would be ashamed".

From earlier times, the book also tells of witch trials in 1673 in which 13 men and women were accused of being servants of the Devil, and how the Earl of Derwentwater led his tenants on the ill-fated Jacobite Rising of 1715.

The Earl was beheaded, while his tenants were transported to the plantations of Virginia.

Mr Kearney said: "Uncovering the whole saga of the Derwentwater rising was riveting - and with quite a twist in the tale - and despite having lived in the area all my life, it came as a total surprise to me to discover that an ordinary farmer from Chopwell came within a whisker of throwing Queen Elizabeth I off the throne."

The book costs £12.99 and is available from Durham County Council libraries, Ottakar's, in Hexham, shops across the Derwent Valley, and also from the online bookseller, Amazon.co.uk

* The author will give a talk about the book, and sign copies, at Consett Library on Thursday, November 11, at 7pm. Tickets cost £1.50 (concessions £1) and include a free glass of wine. They are available from the library on (01207) 503606.