A FORMER pit village plans to explore its history in film and restore its colliery banner.

Waterhouses, near Durham, was once the thriving home to a colliery and several driftmines.

But the slow demise of mining led to it becoming a shadow of its former self.

The Waterhouses Community Association has won a £23,000 grant from the Local Heritage Initiative to refurbish the village's lodge banner and produce a short animated film about the village's history.

Children will also work with the community's elderly people and produce arts and crafts based on their memories and recollections of how life used to be, under a project run by Equal Arts.

Rhona Foster, secretary of the community association, said that at one time, the village had been bigger, but in the 1960s nearly disappeared altogether under the Category D policy, which banned development in some mining villages.

She said: "The banner is in a terrible mess. It is ripped to pieces, but we hope to restore it. It will never be able to be taken out because it is in such a state."

The community association won National Lottery funding three years ago to build a village hall, one of the few facilities it now has.

Mrs Foster said the film, produced with Newcastle's Tyneside Cinema, would focus on the history of Waterhouses and efforts to preserve its heritage.

Published: 04/05/2004