THE transformation of a former County Durham mine and cokeworks into a landscaped open public space has been completed.

Hawthorn Colliery and Cokeworks, near Murton, east Durham, has been the focus of a £17.7m clearance and reclamation scheme.

The project involved the planting of more than 300,000 trees and shrubs, the creation of wetland and reed bed areas, and the conversion of a disused minerals line into a cycleway.

The largest and most complex clearance exercise of any redundant coalfield in the North-East, the transformation of the 200-acre Hawthorn site has been a collaborative project involving key development agencies and environmental specialists.

Regional development agency One NorthEast has managed the overall scheme, with multi-million-pound funding from national regeneration agency English Partnerships.

Environmental and engineering consultants Entec carried out design and supervision of the project - bringing in landscape architects, Insite Environments, to undertake the planting, contouring and habitat development.

Construction expertise was supplied by John Hellens Contractors and VHE Construction at different stages of the project and now Easington District Council has ownership of the site.

Dr John Bridge, chairman of One NorthEast, said: "What has been created here is a major recreational space that can be used by walkers, cyclists and horse-riders and, with the creation of wildflower grass meadows and wetland habitats, it will also be a valuable site for birds and wildlife."

A project spanning more than three years, the development of Hawthorn Colliery has involved some of the most innovative techniques in land clearance, including environmentally-friendly methods to deal with contaminated land.

As a former cokeworks and chemical storage area, contaminants on the site included tar, ammonia, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phenols and heavy metals. The processes used to clear these were complicated by the location of the site, bordered by two Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

Ian Evans, of Entec, said: "The remedial scheme for Hawthorn was technically challenging and innovative."

The landscape team has introduced about 320,000 native species of tree and shrubs.

The Hawthorn Colliery clean up is part of the National Coalfields Programme - a £385m regeneration package designed to breathe new life into coalfield communities across England following the widespread pit closures of the 1980s and 1990s.