Frankland and Brasside are on the north side of the River Wear in a wedge of open countryside formed by the valley that lies between the Durham suburbs of Gilesgate and Newton Hall.

The area can be reached on foot from Durham via Framwellgate waterside. Pass Crook Hall before proceeding along Frankland Lane - a valley pathway once used by monks travelling from Durham to Finchale.

Farmhouses called Frankland Farm and Frankland Park stand either side of the lane recalling the name of a deer park that once belonged to the Prince Bishops. In earlier times it belonged to a franklin, or landowner of free but not noble birth.

Historically, Brasside was a further three quarters of a mile along the lane where Frankland Prison now stands. Brasside means broad hillside and was mentioned in the 1300s. There was no village until the nineteenth century, but a stone house called Herd\rquote s House was built for a horse herder in 1594. It was still there at the time of the 1850s map.

Apart from the prison, the main feature of Brasside is the quarter of a mile wide pond frequented by ducks, geese and grebes. It is immediately south of the prison with a slightly smaller adjoining pond. A third pond lies north of the prison west of Brasside village near the Finchale road.

Brasside village overlooks the prison and is separated from Newton Hall estate by the London to Edinburgh railway. This village\rquote s history is quite recent. Durham Rural District Council built the first street called Finchale Avenue in 1928, to re-house residents from an earlier, rather isolated village also called Brasside. The older village was situated on Frankland Lane, (south of the ponds) and was a coal mining community that sprung up in the 1840s to serve the Earl of Durham\rquote s Frankland and Brasside Collieries. Employment could also be found at nearby sandstone quarries.

The two collieries closed before the end of the nineteenth century but were seemingly reworked in the 1920s and 1930s. By this time most Brasside residents worked at one of two brick and tile works also called Brasside and Frankland.

Both works came into being in the second half of the nineteenth century and were attracted by the extensive clay deposits that could be used in making bricks. Excavation of clay by these works resulted in clay pits that later became the ponds we know today. However the oldest of the clay pits was filled in for the foundations of Frankland prison.

The Brasside brick and tile works opened first but closed in the early twentieth century but the nearby Frankland were still operating in the 1950s.

Old Brasside consisted of colliery streets called Long Row, Short Row and Office Street with around forty households in total. Only two buildings now remain. One is the village's former 1920s community hall and is now inhabited by the owner of a nearby kennel. The other may have belonged to the brickwork's manager.

A school converted from two houses opened in Long Row alongside Frankland Lane in 1886 and a brick church opened nearby around 1904. This was dedicated to St Chad, because Durham University students from St Chad's theological college were involved in the services. Both school and church were finally demolished in 1935 along with the rest of the village.

Some relocated residents in the new Brasside village continued to work at Frankland brick works but employment also came for a time at two new and nearer brick works called Finchale and Newton Grange.

Many wagonways and railways served the industries of the area and some of these are now popular footpaths. In early Victorian times the main railway network in this part of County Durham lay east of the River Wear where the main north to south route was the Leamside Railway. From the 1840s Brasside, Frankland and Framwellgate Moor Collieries were linked to this network by a wagonway that crossed the Wear on a wooden bridge half a mile south of Finchale Priory.

Around 1857 a new railway was built through the area. This was the Bishop Auckland branch of the North Eastern Railway and crossed the river gorge by a new viaduct linking Brasside and Belmont. This impressive viaduct, though not accessible to the public, still stands today. Framwellgate Moor Colliery was linked to this viaduct by a rail spur in 1857 but Brasside and Frankland Collieries were not. When these two collieries closed later in the nineteenth century their wagonways were removed.

In the early 1870s part of the Bishop Auckland line through Durham City became the main London to Edinburgh line and superseded the earlier Leamside line to the east. The new line retained its link with the Brasside viaduct but headed directly north to Edinburgh in a curve past Low Newton Farm. The curve was straightened out in the 1970s to accommodate faster trains.

From the 1940s much land around Low Newton and Brasside belonged to the War Department who built a munitions dump just to the north. Low Newton Youth remand centre opened up on another part of this land in 1965 when the idea of a new high-security prison was also discussed.

Despite local concerns, the construction of Frankland Prison commenced in 1975 next door to the remand centre and over a hundred new houses were built for prison employees at Brasside village. The Prison was scheduled to open in 1982, but due to a prison officers' dispute in October 1980 it was filled with prisoners under the supervision of the Army. When the dispute ended the following January, the prisoners were removed. The army departed, enabling the final completion of Frankland Prison. It permanently reopened in April 1982. In 1997 the neighbouring Low Newton remand centre was designated a female prison.

Published: 08/10/2004

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