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| | | From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
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BBC Radio 4, Birmingham, B5 7QQ.
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Can you help?
Is your village or local rural area planning something brilliant for the August Bank Holiday weekend this year? Open Country is looking for somewhere interesting to record a programme on 25 and 26 August. Naturally it has to have a strong rural theme, so if you are planning something and would like to feature in the programme, please email us and let us know all about it: [email protected]
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Helen Mark visits County Durham, one of the oldest mining areas in the United Kingdom. There are records of coal being extracted as far back as the 13th century. At the height of the industry, in the early part of the 20th century, there were over 150 active collieries and, as these closed, the land became derelict: not just the pit heaps and collieries, but also the railways and by-products works which served them. During the last 20 years the towering heaps of shale have disappeared through a series of large-scale reclamation schemes.
Durham Wildlife Trust
Helen first goes to the coastal town of Seaham, where local historian Donald Miller explains that Seaham was once a natural inlet that was blown up and made into a harbour by the local landowners in order to have a cheaper way of transporting their coal from the area. Before the 1840s, the land was used for agriculture, supplemented by some fishing and smuggling on the coast. The whole of the surrounding area became collieries, with three in Seaham itself. Much of the resulting slag was simply dumped on the beaches and by the time the last colliery closed in the 1990s the coast was totally polluted. The Turning the Tide project removed most of this, although some remains around Castle Eden Dene which the sea will remove in its own time. Helen also meets Dennis Rooney, who was a miner in a Seaham mine. Now he's a coastal warden for the National Trust's Operation Neptune project, involved in the continued restoration and maintenance of the area.
Seaham Harbour
Seaham History
Turning the Tide
Castle Eden Dene National Nature Reserve is the largest area of natural woodland in Northeast England. It's a deep, steep-sided ravine formed in Magnesian Limestone and boulder clay. Naturalist Rob Lamboll manages the nature reserve for English Nature and takes Helen on a walk through the dene, which is full of rare plants (such as the curious herb paris), that have survived in this pocket of countryside once surrounded by collieries and industry. There are important stands of yew and rare mosses to be found in the parts which are ancient wildwood. The rare Northern Brown Argus butterfly has its home on the grassland areas which are also part of this reserve. The dene is also full of folklore and Steve Metcalf, education officer at Castle Eden Dene, recounts tales of how the rock formations are supposed to have been created by the devil when he was helping to build Durham Cathedral.
Castle Eden Dene National Nature Reserve
English Nature projects
Helen visits textile artist Marilyn Hopkins on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland. Marilyn's speciality is hooky rugs, which used to be made by mining families, traditionally using old clothes that had been handed-down until they were of no further use. They were then torn into strips and made into rugs: the original total recycling! The rugs have a closely packed looped pile, the fabric was always wool, and the backing old sugar sacks. Ever-resourceful, the rug-makers made their own tools out of anything from bedheads to screwdrivers. Making a rug was a family affair, with the children sitting under the frame cutting fabric into strips whilst their parents made the rug above them. Most of the clothes they used were quite dull in colour and rug-makers "would kill for a bit of red flannelette from a petticoat".
Rug Making
Helen grabs a pair of binoculars and heads off for Bishop Middleham Quarry, where she joins excited bird-watchers waiting to spot one of a pair of Bee Eaters. These exotically-coloured birds (their plumage is turquoise, red, chestnut, yellow and blue) are normally found in the Mediterranean and Africa and only occasionally seen in Britain. The current pair have built a nest and, as ornithologist Kevin Spindlow explains, there may well be chicks inside. It's difficult to tell as they burrow into the quarry sides, zigzagging nine feet into the soft Magnesian limestone. Kevin's been watching the birds' foraging habits and is convinced that the birds are feeding their young.
RSPB News
The tradition of the colliery brass band is still strong in County Durham, despite the ending of the mining industry. This week the Easington Colliery Band provides a musical backdrop to the programme. It was founded in 1915, when players with band experience were enticed by the colliery management to come to the mine to work, and play in the band. At that time the mining workers' unions of the colliery supported the band financially, each miner paying a penny from his wages. After the closure of the colliery, the band's headquarters were demolished along with the rest of the site. Since then the band has had to rely on sponsorship and fund-raising to keep going. Even so times are hard financially, but Band Manager Peter Lawson says they are determined to keep this link with the mining past alive. It's the youth band which holds the key as Helen discovers when she meets 14-year-old percussionist Sarah Burn, whose passion for playing has already won her praise and prizes.
Easington Colliery Band
This week's competition
How many sections - such as the tenor horn section - are there in a traditional brass band?
Last week's competition winner is Les Powell from Morton on Lugg, Herefordshire, who correctly said that Black Medick was the common name of the plant which looks like Hop Trefoil, apart from the spike on its leaf.
Submit your entry by emailing [email protected]
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Z to Z Britain
Open Country looks back 2003
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