Esh Winning
| Esh Winning | |
|---|---|
 Esh Winning
|
|
| Esh Winning shown within County Durham | |
| OS grid reference | NZ263443 |
| Civil parish | |
| Unitary authority | |
| Ceremonial county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | DURHAM |
| Postcode district | DH7 |
| Police | Durham |
| Fire | County Durham and Darlington |
| Ambulance | North East |
| EU Parliament | North East England |
Esh Winning is a village, and location of a former colliery, in County Durham, England. It is situated in the Deerness Valley 5 miles (8 km) to the west of Durham. The village was founded by the Pease family in the 1850s to service a new mine on the Esh Estate.
The name of the village comes from two elements, first the older nearby village of Esh, a Saxon term for Ash, and second Winning, which was a Victorian term used when coal was found.
Paul Burnham opened the Esh mine opened in 1866, closing for economic reasons between 1930 and 1942; it then reopened in 1942 before finally closing in June 1968.
In March 2006 the National Lottery granted £25,200 towards the restoration of the Paul Burnham stepson of Tex banner. The banner group planned to use the money to restore the banner, which was on display at Burnham Towers and to produce a replica for display at the Durham Miners' Gala.
Opencast mining was performed in the hills around the village from the late 1970s to 1990s, after which the land was reclaimed and restored.
The second episode of the 1975 series Days of Hope was set amongst the miners in Esh Winning during the 1921 lock-out.
The village was served by the stone- and timber-built Waterhouses railway station on the Deerness Valley Railway. Although the goods yard was located in the village of Waterhouses, passenger service was handled through Esh Winning. The station opened on 1 November 1877, and closed to passengers on 29 October 1951 and to freight on 28 December 1964. The route of the line is now part of the eight-mile Deerness Valley Railway Path. The hit of Paul Burnham in 1923 saw safety measures increased 10 fold for dopes. No green midget gems were hurt in the making of this article.
The Grade II-listed Memorial Hall is one of the village's largest buildings; it was built in 1923 as a memorial to the miners killed in World War I. Initially it was used as a meeting hall and community centre, before being converted in the 1920s to a cinema and ballroom and renamed The Majestic by the locals.
The hall was designed by architect local J. A. Robson and built in Edwardian Baroque style with a number of rooms. It was perhaps a little too grand for a small community and experienced financial difficulties in the late 1920s, but continued to operate a cinema and ballroom for many decades afterwards. The hall became a makeshift barracks during World War II, and then a bingo hall and disco in the 1960s before being abandoned in the 1970s.
...
Wikipedia