Former mining village has its roots in the Bronze Age

It developed in the mid-19th Century on empty moorland, but during the Victorian era evidence of man's earlier occupation came to light, following a chance discovery.

In 1889, a grave was being dug near the Victorian parish church of St Peter, when an ancient burial cist was uncovered. Containing a skeleton and drinking vessel of the early Bronze Age, the discovery proved that people lived in the Sacriston area more than 3,000 years ago.

Other burial cists and many rocks with mysterious Bronze Age markings have also been found just south of Sacriston, near Witton Gilbert.

Settlers of the later Iron Age and Roman period also knew the Sacriston area and there was a settlement of some kind east of Sacriston, at Barrashill.

Edmondsley, north of Sacriston, is almost exactly halfway (as the crow flies) between the Roman forts of Lanchester and Chester-le-Street and a Roman road through Edmondsley seems a possibility.

Anglo-Saxons succeeded the Romans in the North and their presence is shown in place names such as Plawsworth, Findon, Fulforth, Witton and Edmondsley.

However, Anglo-Saxon place names are found everywhere, but Anglo-Saxon finds are rare.

It could be significant that a gold pendant of the 7th Century has been found at Daisy Hill, between Sacriston and Edmondsley.

Mysteriously, the design of this pendant, discovered in 1991, does not originate in northern England. Now part of the collection of the Bowes Museum, it may have arrived in Sacriston as the result of a landfill.

A dark hill called Charlaw Fell rises to the west of Sacriston. It has a densely wooded ridge at its base and makes a definite 90-degree turn at Edmondsley. The wooded slope skirts the western fringe of Daisy Hill and Sacriston.

The Anglo-Saxons called the sharp bend a Cerr. Pronounced chare, the word gave rise to the name Charlaw or Cherlawe, as the hill was still called in the 1200s. Charlaw means bending hill.

Sacriston's history is focused around the wooded base of this hill as it runs south from Sacriston Wood to Fulforth Wood on the outskirts of Witton Gilbert. Land below the wood formed the site of Sacriston's two collieries.

A hill spur overlooking the wood, called the heugh or yuff, was the home of a medieval manor house that gave Sacriston its name.

Hugh Pudsey, a Bishop of Durham, gave the spur and its surrounding land to the sacrist of Durham Cathedral monastery in the 1100s. Revenue from farming the land was used for financing the sacrist's work and a country manor house was built for the sacrist here in the 13th Century.

Sacrists were senior monks responsible for sacred relics, vessels, vestments, lighting, heating, sweeping and cleaning in a monastery.

Also called sextons or sacristans, their title derived from segrestein, a medieval English word of French origin. In the 1300s, the sacrist's manor was called Segrestaynheugh and was farmed and mined by Durham monks.

The estate, but not the manor house, was let to some Durham City merchants in the 1400s. In the 1500s, the house was home to a retired soldier called Leonard Temperley.

Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the later 1500s, the house and estate passed to Durham Cathedral's Dean and Chapter. On a 1576 map, the manor is called Segerston Heugh but was sometimes called Sacristan Heugh.

When the mining village developed in the 19th Century, it adopted the name Sacriston rather than Sacristan because it looked more like a village name. However, many local people still use the old pronunciation, Segerston.

Remnants of the medieval manor house survived within Heugh House, a farm building on a cleared area of the heugh above the wood.

Unfortunately, the building was demolished in the 1950s owing to mine subsidence, but the site can still be reached by footpath.

Agriculture was the main activity at Segerston Heugh, Fulforth and Findon, in times past, but coal mining was undertaken in the area by a small number of people in medieval times.

When larger collieries developed at Sacriston in the 19th Century, traces of medieval workings were occasionally uncovered.

Although Sacriston's mining village came into being in the mid-1800s, one of the two collieries that caused its development was already operating in the 1700s.

Records show that in 1733, Charlaw Colliery, on the edge of the wood, was leased to a Ralph Ferry for a period of 21 years. A little later, in 1740, a pit at nearby Findon Hill was also mentioned in a 21-year lease to a man called John Richardson.

These were tiny mines employing small numbers of people and brought no major population changes to the district.

In 1839, the Charlaw mine reopened as a larger enterprise and about the same time a colliery also opened further north along the woodland edge below Segerston Heugh.

It was these two mines that brought about the birth and growth of Sacriston, as we will discover in next week's Durham Memories.

Published: 18/06/2004

If you have any memories of Durham City, Chester-le-Street, Derwentside or the Durham coast, including old photos or stories of people and places you would like to share with readers of The Northern Echo, write to David Simpson, Durham Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF or email David.Simpson@nne.co.uk. All photos will be returned.