Old Cornsay dates from Anglo-Saxon times when it was called Cornesho meaning hill spur of the crane. Such a bird is rarely found in Britain today and only in lowland fens. However it seems that at least one crane found its way north to these Pennine foothills many centuries ago.

Cornsay is seven miles west of Durham City and one of the most westerly villages of the area. A crow or perhaps even a crane flying directly west from Durham after passing Cornsay would only encounter the little village of Satley, a mile and a half to the west. The empty Pennine hills lie beyond.

Satley and Cornsay are reached on quiet back roads in scenery of rolling hills and dry stone walls. These villages were little affected by the coal mining that was so prevalent in the east. Rural industries dominated both places with two smithies at Cornsay in the nineteenth century and another at Satley. Other trades at Satley included a cobbler and a miller. Some quarrying was undertaken here but most inhabitants worked in farming.

Many buildings in the two villages are farmhouses. One barn just outside Satley incorporates the tomb of a notorious livestock thief or mosstrooper called Thomas Raw who died in 1714. His presence demonstrates the difficult nature of farming here in times gone by.

Satley is situated alongside the B6296 in the ravine of the Steeley Burn half way between Tow Law and Lanchester. The stream feeds the source of the River Browney a mile to the north at Lanchester where it begins its winding journey towards Durham.

A family called Greenwell owned Satley in the 1300s but later owners included the Marleys and Heswells. Satley was of some importance to the surrounding area, being the site of a medieval chapel, but it was a dependent church of Lanchester parish. Satley's present church dates from the nineteenth century. Satley's most prominent building, the Punch Bowl Inn, has served the village since the nineteenth century and has long been popular with travellers and farmers from miles around.

Cornsay is located on a quieter back road than Satley and forms a scattered collection of stone houses clustered around a large undulating green. In the Boldon Buke, Durham's Domesday Book of 1183, the village belonged to Walter the Chamberlain who annually transported wine, 12 oxen and 2 ropes to the Bishop of Durham's hunting expeditions as payment for the land.

A 200-year-old coaching inn called the Black Horse is a major feature of the village. Built on a road that brought goods and mail from Weardale, it is claimed that a ghost called Mavis haunts the pub cellar and toilets. Another interesting feature of the village is a stone superstucture built on the green in 1743 to cover the village well. It now incorporates a post box and must cause nervous moments for residents listening for their post to hit the bottom.

Cornsay is called Old Cornsay to distinguish it from Cornsay Colliery village a mile and a half to the east. Cornsay Colliery is on the edge of the coalfield and its nearest neighbours are old mining villages like Quebec and Esh Winning. Another nearby village called Wilks Hill between Quebec and Cornsay Colliery was important for quarrying.

Old Cornsay and Satley are typical Pennine farming settlements but Cornsay Colliery is more typical of a mining village. As with neighbouring Quebec, only houses in the main street survive. This is Commercial Street or the B6301. Its most prominent building is the Royal Oak pub, built with the rest of the village on empty fields and woodland in the nineteenth century. Most streets in the village have now gone and the majority stood in the fields across the road from the pub.

Cornsay Colliery was opened in 1868 by Ferens and Love who employed 700 men at the colliery and its associated drift mines.

Some of the land was leased from Ushaw's Catholic College with many streets like Gillow Street named after college priests. The village was not noticeably Catholic and indeed its only church was a Methodist New Connexion Chapel built by Mr Love, the staunchly Methodist coal owner. Two schools, (one Catholic) were situated at the northern end of the village along with a Temperance Hall that was later a cinema called The Victory. Most of Cornsay Colliery's terraced rows were removed by the mid-1970s and many residents were relocated to Esh Winning's Hamsteels estate.

Cornsay colliery's actual colliery stood at the southern end of the village on the western side of the main road. Of almost equal importance to the production of coal was the extraction of fire clay that seems to have been particularly abundant at this locality. Mr Love established a works alongside the colliery specifically for the manufacture of bricks and sanitary pipes using fire clay extracted from the mine. The brick works operated for some time after the closure of the colliery in 1953.

The Cornsay Railway linked Cornsay Colliery to the Deerness Railway and ran along the valleys of the Priest and Hedleyhope Burns from Esh Winning. A number of outlying drifts operated by the colliery were linked to the main works by smaller wagonways. One drift, a mile and a half to the west was situated on the eastern outskirts of Old Cornsay while another was located at Hollinside near Lanchester about two miles to the north. The picturesque hamlet of Hollinside Terrace erected in 1892 just south of Lanchester seems to have housed Cornsay Colliery officials. It consists of a single row of eighteen houses of which number one and number eighteen are much larger than the rest. It is undoubtedly one of the most attractive colliery terraces in the north of England.

Thanks to Betty Whaley for her information on Hollinside Terrace.

If you have memories of Durham you would like to share with The Northern Echo, write to David Simpson, Durham Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF. Email David.Simpson@nne. co. uk or telephone (01325) 505098.

Published: 09/04/2004