WITH the railways weaving their way down the Gaunless Valley, there was, at last, a way for the coal to get out. But people were needed to get the coal out, so the valley, like most of south Durham, experienced a population explosion during the 19th Century. The number of adults living there tripled.

The iron industries of Darlington and Teesside tended to suck workers in from places such as Ireland and Scotland, whereas mining was mainly done by men from other parts of County Durham moving into the valley.

Primarily agricultural Hamsterley, for example, lost population during the 19th Century as men moved out of the fields and into the mines.

The scouring of maps has suggested that there have been 549 collieries, drifts or shafts in the Gaunless Valley, the majority of which never had names.

Miners just dug into the face of the fell until there was no more coal to be had.

The Haggerleases railway branchline opened in 1830, and by 1852 there were at least 11 collieries working alongside it: Copley Colliery (Smout Pit), Jane Pit (East Butterknowle Colliery), Millfield Grange, Lands Colliery, Storey Lodge Colliery, Norwood Pit, Evenwood New Winning, Evenwood Colliery (Thrushwood), Tees-Hetton Colliery, Gordon Colliery and West Auckland Colliery.

In 1844, the largest pit was Evenwood Colliery, which employed 300 men and boys (until 1842, boys as young as ten were allowed to work in the mines).

By 1896, there were 25 mines in operation in the valley employing 3,125 men. Probably the smallest was Copley, which employed just eight men.

Probably the largest was the new Randolph Colliery - sunk at Evenwood in 1893, although it came to include the workings at Norwood and Thrushwood - which employed 449 men. All the collieries surrounding Butterknowle employed 700 men and boys.

Coal's heyday probably came just after the Second World War.

Cockfield's population in 1921 peaked at 2,693; Randolph was at its largest in about 1930, when it employed 824, as was Gordon House Colliery, on Cockfield Fell, which employed 504.

When the mines were nationalised in 1947, there were 1,073 men employed in 16 mines, with the Randolph and Gordon House collieries responsible for more than half of them.

Gradually, the valley's mines were 'rationalised'. The last to go were Ramshaw in 1959, Randolph in 1960, Gordon House in 1961, Esperley Lane Drift in 1962 and West Auckland and Staindrop Field House Drift in 1967.

The miners themselves drifted off to other coalfields in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire, or to nearby pits such as Brusselton and Fishburn, which were themselves working on borrowed time.

Naturally, they took their families with them: for example, by 1981, Cockfield's population had dropped to 1,792.

WITH such a surge in population, new homes were thrown up. Not all of them were good quality.

In 1868, Cockfield was ravaged by a typhoid epidemic which killed 12 people.

At the request of the local vicar, the Reverend Harry Lipscomb, the Home Office in London sent an inspector, Arnold Taylor, to investigate.

"The village and the land adjoining it occupy not only a high but a very open and exposed situation, swept by every wind that blows," began Mr Taylor's report.

"As far as natural advantages are concerned, Cockfield is one of the healthiest places in the district.

"In spite of this, there has been typhoid fever in the village since November 1868, some 150 cases in a total population of 860, 12 of the cases having already ended fatally. The causes of the fever are not far to seek. The population of the village is chiefly made up of pitmen and their families who, as a class, are more remarkable for their neglect than the observance of the common rules of order and cleanliness.

"There is not a drain or sewer in Cockfield. The slop water and refuse from middens and pigsties are throw out upon, and ooze away on, the surface of the ground.

"There is the most disgraceful want of privy accommodation. On average, one privy serves ten people. There are huge collections of filth and refuse around the houses, and there is excessive overcrowding of the inmates."

Cockfield began to clean up its act. Refuse was removed; privies and ash pits were disinfected with chloride of lime. More toilets were built and a civil engineer was engaged to plan a sewer system.

THE valley must have resounded to an industrial cacophony in its heyday - and from 1895 it was lit with the bright orange fires of the Randolph coke works, which were said to be the most extraordinary sight in County Durham.

The Randolph complex, high up at Evenwood, was connected to the Haggerleases line at the valley bottom by 1,260ft railway line.

A stationery engine dropped six wagons of a coal at a time down the line to the trains.

Gordon House Colliery, on Cockfield Fell, also had a private incline down to the Haggerleases line.

The Isabella tramway ran through Norwood, and there were all manner of tubways running around Railey Fell collecting coal from the various workings.

The Woodland Tramway carried coal from Arngill up the valley side before it disappeared into a tunnel underneath the village of Woodland.

The tunnel emerged at the foot of the winding shaft of Woodland Colliery and the coal was then winched up and put aboard Woodland's private railway.

The railway ran around the contours of the fell for five miles before joining the Barnard Castle to Bishop Auckland line, near Lands Viaduct.

The Woodland line, colliery and tramway all closed about 1928.

Arngill, though, was still working when the National Coal Board took it over in 1947.

A distant drift mine was connected to Arngill by a tramway; a ropeway swung the coal across Arngill and then another little railway dropped it a mile or so on to a siding near Penny Hill, off the Barnard Castle line.

* A LARGE number of people ventured out on to Cockfield Fell and visited the local history exhibition in Butterknowle over the bank holiday weekend.

The organisers would like to thank all who attended, and plenty of new information was gleaned.

John Anderson ventured out from Darlington and found it fascinating.

"The good women of Butterknowle deserve praise for the grand tea and biscuits that they served up in the village hall," he writes, "and the guides and stewards did well to control the large crowd of walkers."

Published: ??/??/2002

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