Local film screenings of the new documentary Defiant: County Durham, The Miners’ Strike and its Legacy are coming to our doorstep this month, offering our community a deeply personal chance to reflect on our shared history, writes Sue Reece. Hosted by Chilton & Windlestone – Our Heritage at the Pavilion in partnership with Redhills Durham, these intimate community screenings will take place on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October.
Directed by Marie Gardiner and Mark Thorburn of Lonely Tower Film & Media, Defiant places the raw, first-hand voices of the people who lived through the 1984/85 strike – our families, neighbours and friends – firmly at the heart of the story.
For the residents of Chilton, Ferryhill, and the surrounding areas, this film strikes incredibly close to home. Long before the 1984 dispute, our identity was forged entirely by the local coal mining industry. Chilton was originally a dedicated mining community known as “Chilton Buildings”, built explicitly around the arrival of the pits.
The industrial roots of our village run deep into the late 19th century: Chilton Colliery was sunk in 1872 with its No.1 shaft. The colliery went through multiple expansions under Pease & Partners. It became a massive enterprise, featuring a battery of 52 Simplex coke ovens and generating an output of 950 tons of coal a day from the Five-Quarter and Main Coal seams.
Windlestone Colliery was sunk just down the road in 1876. The pit worked the Brockwell, Busty, and Harvey seams. The layout of our streets directly reflects this history. While the Chilton mine itself stood on the site of what is now the primary school, the miners and their families lived in the housing surrounding Windlestone Colliery. Terraces like Albert Street, Arthur Street, and Prospect Terrace were known far and wide as “The Five Rows” owing to their uniform appearance from the front.
A pivotal part of our local history – and a reason why the 1984/85 strike hit our area so intensely – lies in what happened after our local pits fell silent. By 1960, Chilton’s underground operations were formally merged with the massive Dean & Chapter Colliery. When Dean & Chapter closed in January 1966, the stoppage of its water pumps flooded right through the subterranean seams into Chilton and Mainsforth, ultimately forcing the final closures of our immediate local pits.
However, the closure of the colliery did not mean the end of the Chilton and Windlestone miner. Because coal was still in their blood, hundreds of local men refused to leave the industry. Instead, they transferred to working pits spread far and wide across the Durham coalfield.
Our local miners commuted daily to coastal super-pits like Horden, Murton, Seaham, and Dawdon, or moved to working inland collieries like Sacriston and Herrington. They carried the fierce solidarity and traditions of Chilton and Windlestone with them into every new face they worked. Consequently, when the national strike was called in 1984 to protect jobs and save communities, our village was instantly on the front line. Local families weren’t just fighting for an abstract cause; they were fighting for the livelihoods of Chilton men working right across the county.
The social conscience that defines our community today was forged in those colliery yards, row cottages, and union meetings. The proud Chilton miners’ banner, which still marches at the Durham Miners’ Gala, reminds us of historical figures like John Herriotts, a Windlestone Colliery checkweighman who championed workers’ rights and rose to become a local MP.
As Defiant demonstrates, when the coalfield was targeted during the 1984/85 strike, it was an existential struggle for survival. Because our local workforce was deeply integrated into the wider Durham National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) network, local families bore the brunt of the dispute.
During that gruelling year-long strike, when union funds ran completely dry, the survival of our community fell to the fierce solidarity networks of local families. Women stepped forward from “The Five Rows” and surrounding streets to run soup kitchens, secure public donations, and ensure children were fed. Defiant honours this collective spirit, providing an unvarnished look at the mothers, miners, and community activists who refused to be broken.
While the historic Redhills Miners’ Hall in Durham is widely known as the “Pitman’s Parliament”, its “Coalfield Community Tour” ensures that our heritage is brought directly back to the villages that created it.
These small-scale, intimate screenings at the Pavilion Heritage Centre provide an ideal, safe civic space for older generations to pass down memories of the pits and for younger residents to understand the roots of their local pride. Though the pit wheels have long stopped turning, the unbroken spirit of Chilton Windlestone’s and Ferryhill mining families lives on.
Sue Reece
Ferryhill & Chilton's local community newspaper.
