THERE are moments when you open up a picture packet in The Northern Echo's library and know you have struck photographic gold.

This happened to me last week when I was looking for images to go with this morning's article about Wheatley Hill and surrounding mining villages: Thornley and Ludworth.

These two pictures were taken on August 30, 1969, I guess to illustrate an article about the village in the wake of the closure Wheatley Hill Colliery and the loss of 534 jobs.

That figure doesn't tell the whole story, though. According to the superb Durham Mining Museum website - dmm.org.uk - in 1940, 1,813 were employed at Wheatley Hill Colliery alone. In 1950, that was down to 1,011, and in 1960 885. It closed on May 3, 1968 - how any community could survive such a catastrophic loss of jobs over such a short period of times is unimagineable.

Yet the ladies and the kids in the back street look happy enough. Look at the rollers in her hair; look at her pinny, look at her fur-lined wellies (it's the end of August), look at the muscles in her arms (it has been suggested to me that these are typical poss-tub arms in those pre-washing machine days)...

And the second picture of the ladies walking away from the camera is pure Les Dawson, especially with that little dog about to cock its leg...

For some reason, these pictures have never been published before. I wonder if we'll get to find out who the ladies were.

(I've got quite a few more Wheatley Hill jottings that I'll post up here as time allows.)