A film produced by Ian Cummings for Durham City Planning Department recording the last days of Bearpark Colliery near Durham City before closure in April 1984. Various general views of the colliery and its surroundings show the poor state of the mine before closure. Members of the planning department are joined on a tour of the pit by a former employee who is able to provide details on both the history and workings of the mine. To a choir singing the hymn Jerusalem Bearpark Colliery and...

A film produced by Ian Cummings for Durham City Planning Department recording the last days of Bearpark Colliery near Durham City before closure in April 1984. Various general views of the colliery and its surroundings show the poor state of the mine before closure. Members of the planning department are joined on a tour of the pit by a former employee who is able to provide details on both the history and workings of the mine. To a choir singing the hymn Jerusalem Bearpark Colliery and village near Durham City surrounded by field. From a road leading to the colliery the pitheads and other buildings making up the colliery. At the entrance to the colliery itself a National Coal Board (NCB) North East area sign for the colliery followed by general views of the colliery yard, pithead and surrounding buildings. A phantom walk with the camera following a path leading into a building at the colliery past a board containing several ‘Watch This Space’ NCB posters. The path leads through a door into a room where miner’s pit check tokens hang from wooden boards. In a nearby office a man sitting at a desk speaking with someone off screen. Another path leads along a corridor with a barrier down the middle to the lamp room where lamps are stacked in shelves. A man in a suit and hardhat shows another man how the lamps were charged. Behind a wire barrier another office with the path leading outside towards the pithead and the yard below. A narrow-gauge rail track comes out of the pithead building outside which sit an empty and rusty coal wagon. More general views of the colliery yards featuring both pitheads and several derelict buildings as well as rubble and a couple of old cold wagons sitting in the general dereliction of the site. In another part of the colliery yard a building containing four silos into which the coal would have once flowed, in the foreground a conveyor. Both the building and conveyor show signs of derelictions and damage. Inside one of the darkened buildings empty floors and holes in the roof. The man in the suit seen earlier in the lamp room walks along a pathway beside a conveyor. Leading up to this pathway a set of well-trodden metal steps. In another part of the building empty and rusting coal hops. From a window the yard below and Bearpark village nearby. Back outside a pithead and adjoining building changes to atop the pithead itself and the large winding wheels and houses in Bearpark village below with smoke coming from many of the chimneys. A line of whitewashed building in the colliery yard below and a panoramic view featuring a stockpile of pit props, ropes or cabling as well as a line of coal wagons. Nearby the building containing the second shaft and pithead. In the distance on a far hillside the remains of a possible lime kiln followed by more views of the surrounding landscape which also forms part of the colliery. Two men stand outside the whitewashed building seen from the pithead, inside large pieces of heavy machinery and three men looking around with one of them explaining what each piece is and what it did. A poster on the wall reads ‘No Pit Closures. Save Your Job!’ Back outside again one of the men holds a section of drill, his colleague explains to him how it worked. In another building a man fills a contain inside a birdcage with water, the two canaries inside flying about as he closes the cage door. Back in the yard the younger of two men holds up a large pit check token, the man standing beside him who use to work for the colliery explaining what it was and how it worked. The two men then read a copy of a page from a colliery wages ledger giving names and how much a man at the colliery made in August 1872. The older former employee them talks about the industrial relations at Bearpark providing dates when the men were on strike including what was then the 1984-85 Miner’s Strike. A man jogs past a modern community hall and the film changes to a series of maps and archival photographs to accompanying a commentary on the history of Bearpark Colliery. Title: At the beginning of April 1984, Bearpark Colliery closed. The last working colliery in Durham District and one of the last and oldest thin seam pits in the country. Title: This was an attempt to record the last days of the colliery in order that future generations may in some small way be shown the working conditions of their fathers and grandfathers Title: The Council of the City of Durham would like to thank the NCB, both at Team Valley and Bearpark Colliery; the Durham Miners Association and Mr. J. Rayner Credit: J.R. Macmillan – Production R.J. Thompson – Co-ordination Title: The Last Days of Bearpark Colliery Credit: Directed and filmed by Ian Cummings M.A. End title: Produced for the City of Durham © April 1984