Bankruptcy and litigation - it was never quiet in the Gaunless Valley's mines, and on one occasion, the House of Lords sensationally had to adjudicate on a village dispute.

MINING was a notoriously fickle business. Fortunes fluctuated wildly and nowhere showed that more than the pits of Butterknowle, which drove one man to bankruptcy and then drove a company into liquidation as it - quite literally - undermined a whole village.

The bankrupt was the Reverend William Luke Prattman who, it will be remembered, was the Congregational Church minister from Barnard Castle.

He held shares in the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) and in 1824 married the daughter of Robert Lodge.

His railway shares now became wedded to Mr Lodge's coal-mining rights in pits around Butterknowle.

Mr Prattman thought that this union could be fruitful, and he set about blackmailing the directors of the S&DR. He said he would vote against them unless they diverted their proposed railway to Evenwood, so that it came by Butterknowle to pick up his coal. He won the day and the Haggerleases line, which came to the foot of the bank on which Butterknowle sits, opened in 1830.

The marriage between the railway shares and the mining rights did provide wedded bliss for Mr Prattman. By 1835, he was exporting about 42,000 tons of coal from his Butterknowle pits.

But then he ran into expensive geological problems. He decided to speculate to accumulate and took out a mortgage of £20,800 with which he sank the Diamond Pit in The Slack at the foot of Butterknowle bank.

But Diamond was not lucrative and by 1841 Mr Prattman's debts had racked up to £40,000. He went bankrupt and died in 1846.

No one, though, could be found to take over the pits, so the liquidators continued to run them, turning out 17,000 tons a year.

In the early 1850s, the coal industry went from bust to boom. The liquidators found investors - Backhouses' bank of Darlington lent £5,000 - and in 1854 Diamond was reopened. In 1855, Prattman's pits produced 36,450 tons of coal and made a profit of £3,280 for the new owner, the Butterknowle Colliery Company.

A tramway was installed following the course of Grewburn Beck, taking coal down Butterknowle bank to the Haggerleases line and the coke ovens.

In 1896 the colliery company owned Diamond, Quarry and Wham pits and employed 378 men underground and 150 on the surface. There were probably another 150 or so boys employed, taking its total labour force to about 700.

However, the coal company was about to be pulled apart at the seams by an historic court case.

The plaintiff was the Bishop Auckland Industrial Co-operative Flour and Provision Society. It had opened a shop in Butterknowle in 1885, and in 1890 it bought a couple of cottages for its branch manager and buttery manager to live in.

But on May 14, 1898, the branch manager reported that a small crack had appeared in his house wall. Naturally, the Co-op committee was concerned, particularly given Butterknowle's extensive mining history, and it sought legal advice.

The lawyers were pessimistic, because in County Durham since time immemorial coal had been king. The lord of the manor owned everything - except that which had been granted, or sold, to private individuals.

Even then, if the lord sold a surface plot of land he still retained the rights to do whatever he liked with the minerals buried beneath.

His only obligation was to ensure that his mining operations did not unduly affect the "pasturage" on which the commoners were allowed to graze their animals.

Sheep and cows do not really mind if the ground they are grazing is a little uneven or prone to occasional sinking. They care only about their grass.

Only humans, with their bricks and mortar buildings, care if the ground gives way once in a while, causing their homes to fall down.

In Durham, the lord of the manor was the Bishop of Durham. The Bishop, or whoever he chose to let the mining rights to, could burrow away with impunity.

By 1902, the cracks in the Co-op's walls were becoming serious - and there were rumours that the Butterknowle Colliery Company, which leased the rights from the Bishop's representatives, was continuing to excavate beneath the houses.

The Co-op felt it had a duty to its members, who were ordinary, hard-working people.

Their money - and in some cases in Butterknowle their houses - was being undermined by the colliery.

But the company, knowing it had legal backing, refused to enter into negotiations. It refused to pay compensation for the damage or alter its way of working.

On September 1, 1902, the Co-op committee wrote a strongly worded letter to the company: "It would be manifestly unjust for the Co-operative Society to sit quietly down and see its property wrecked, or to take the hard-earned savings of its thrifty members to cover such wreckage while the real causers of the damage enjoy immunity.

"To assert that they who reap the profit should pay the damage is to state that which will receive the assent of all true moral sentiment.

"All we ask is some reasonable compensation for repairs."

The company's response was to deny it was mining in the area - a nonsense given that many of the Co-op's members were miners who knew exactly where they were working.

The Co-op faced a momentous decision. Should it plough its thrifty members' money into a case which could not be won, or should it take a principled stand against the iniquity of the law? In January 1903, it took a principled stand and launched legal proceedings. A local judge forced the company to allow the Co-op's surveyors underground to seek evidence.

The case of Bishop Auckland Industrial Co-operative Flour and Provision Society Limited versus Butterknowle Colliery Company Limited came before the High Court in London in January 1904.

The Co-op's position was that although the landowner could sell the surface land and keep the mining rights, he did not have the right to destroy the surface. The colliery's position was that it could destroy the surface without paying compensation.

On February 1, 1904, Lord Justice Farwell decided that although the lord of the manor had the right to mine as he liked, under common law the surface owner had the right to have his surface properly supported.

He awarded the Co-op damages and told the colliery it would have to pay costs.

There was great rejoicing in Bishop Auckland, where the Co-op had been saved from possible bankruptcy, and in Butterknowle, where many ordinary people looked at the cracks in their homes and thought about the compensation.

However, the company appealed. The Court of Appeal decided in the Co-op's favour in March 1906, and in May the House of Lords - the highest court in the land - also agreed that miners should support the surface under which they were excavating.

It was a resounding victory. The humble Co-op had taken on a huge colliery company which had the immense support of the Ecclestiastical Commissioners, who represented the Bishop of Durham.

"A great battle had been fought, not simply in defence of the Co-op's interests, but also for the defence of the principles of equity and justice," said the Co-op committee.

But it was a battle in vain, a pyrrhic victory. The company immediately closed its pits - Bowes Hill, Diamond, Jubilee, Quarry, Moor Hill, North Crane Row and Wham - and put itself into liquidation. For the Co-op, this was a double whammy.

First, a large number of Butterknowlians began pressing compensation claims against the colliery company for damaged walls.

Because the company was in liquidation, the more villagers who claimed, the less money there was for the Co-op.

In 1908, the Co-op reckoned up its balance sheet. It had applied for £1,000 to repair its property. It received from the colliery £640. Loss: £360.

Its legal costs came to £1,387 7s 6d. It received from the colliery £628 3s 2d. Loss: £759 4s 4d. A total loss of £1,120, which is equivalent to about £60,000 today. This was a considerable sum for a small branch like Butterknowle.

Then the second part of the double whammy hit home. The closure of the colliery meant that 550 adult males (plus boys) were thrown out of work - all of them customers and members of the Co-op.

Without them spending their weekly wage packet over the Co-op's counter, the Butterknowle branch was even further down.

The Co-op did manage to survive until 1968, although its store has now been pulled down and replaced by a couple of houses.

Mining also survived around Butterknowle village - just about.

The Wham pit stumbled on, employing three people until 1930; the North Crane Row pit kept five men in work until 1945.

The Butterknowle Marsfield Colliery Company took over the Diamond Pit, renamed it the Stags Head and employed 22 men.

It abandoned the pit in 1914 and concentrated on the Grewburn drift, which employed 22 men underground and six on the surface. The Grewburn, the last mine in Butterknowle, closed in March 1950.

With mining and the Co-op both gone, the one survivor from the long tale is the house that sparked the court case.

The Co-op manager's home in Breckon Hill was stabilised and repaired. Last week it was sold. It was on the market for £110,000.

Most of the pictures on this page, and illustrating recent articles, have been taken from three CD Roms of pictures compiled by the Gaunless Valley History Trust.

The CDs are available from Mike Heaviside, of 2 Moor View, Cockfield, DL13 5EX, or e-mail mikeheaviside3.freeserve. co.uk

Published: 17/09/2002

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.