LIFE used to be regulated by the march of miners' boots here.

Former pitman Peter Campbell, 72, who lived within 30 yards of the road leading into Vane Tempest Colliery recalls: "You could set your watch to the sound of miners walking past.

"There was the early morning shift, at a quarter to four, the next at 10am, the night shift at 4pm and the tub loading shift at 10pm.

"But when the pit closed, in 1993, a deathly silence fell over the whole town of Seaham. People were wandering around not knowing what was going to happen next.

"The town lost all its young people because there was no work for them."

But things gradually changed, with the pension office opening with 450 jobs, the new road from the A19, and a new shopping centre arriving next year.

And yesterday there was the opening of East Shore Village.

Looking out from his sitting room, Mr Campbell town and district councilor said: "It has taken away my view of the sea, but it is a good thing for the town."

Vane Tempest Colliery was one of the more recent additions to the map of the Durham Coalfield. The first sod was cut at the colliery in 1923, as the latest addition to the Londonderry mining estate.

The Vane Tempest name however has much longer associations with the coal mining industry.

In 1819, Anne Vane Tempest married the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry, a soldier-turned-industrialist who created Seaham Harbour in 1828.

He then expanded his coal operations around Durham, before developing mining in Seaham itself. Dawdon pit was to follow, then this century a third colliery with the two shafts of Vane Tempest.

By 1951, following nationalisation, there were 3,347 men employed at Vane Tempest and by the late 1960s it was producing more than a million tonnes of coal a year.

The pit, known affectionately as the New Winnen - after the term for a tunnel leading to the coal face - merged with nearby Seaham Colliery in 1983 and by the time it closed in 1993 manpower had shrunk to 877.

Coun Campbell, along with the town council, does have one very strong reservation about the new development - its name.

He says: "They should call it Vane Tempest. Many men died down the mine and we do not want to forget them."

He and the town council will continue pushing for the reinstatement of the site's original name - to ensure that the men whose boots crunched down to the pit do not become just a faded memory.