(from Geordies, Yankees & Canucks by William Wonders)
At Thornley, as at other new mines in East Durham, the landowner, Henry John Spearman was not directly involved in developing or operating the colliery. Instead, he leased the mining rights to the partners of the Thornley Coal Company. As Lords of the Manor of the Thornley Estate, the family had abandoned Thornley Hall in the 1700’s and were living in their other seat—Newton Hall. These leases by the colliery companies required “the payment of a certain rent”, a fixed annual sum to be paid for an agreed upon number of years, whether coal was mined or not. In addition, a royalty or ‘tentale’ rent was paid for each ‘ten’ of coal mined. The leasees were also granted the right to erect essential mining facilities on the surface—houses, brickworks, ponds, waste sites and rights of way for the railway. By leasing their lands to the colliery companies, landowners received much more money for allowing the land to be used than the miners did for working 18 hours a day in dangerous conditions to bring the coal to the surface.
Once Thornley became established as a pit village the workers at the pit were drawn from other areas of County Durham mostly but many came from Northumberland, valued for their expertise in mining and attracted by favourable wages in the early stages. The pit and the village at Thornley developed simultaneously and very quickly. The first housing was along the length of a railway line and immediately to the east on the south side of the railway were the coke ovens. At the west end of the main street was the market place and the post office and many colliery rows of housing. A brickworks near the village provided the necessary building materials needed for its growth.
The Church of St Bartholomew was erected in 1843 on land donated by H J Spearman and Gore Hall became the vicarage. The Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists also had places of worship in the village and a Roman Catholic chapel opened in a former dissenting chapel in 1850. A National School opened in 1837 which was supported by the colliery owners.
A reading room was established in 1843 which was supported by both the colliery owners and H J Spearman and despite its presence and that of the churches, particularly the Primitive Methodists with their teetotal policies, drinking remained a characteristic feature of everyday life for the miners in Thornley. In 1855 there were 15 public houses in Thornley. However it was well known throughout the area that the pitmen at Thornley worked longer hours than agricultural labourers up to the age of 70 years of age, an ‘old’ man of this age earning between 2s and 2/8d per day. It was also widely known that the Thornley workforce included troublemakers. A possible reason for this may be that when the pit opened and needed a large number of workers quickly, men who had been blacklisted for union activity at other pits in Durham and Northumberland may have made their way to Thornley under different names in order to obtain work at the new pit. In 1846 one of the agents at the pit, painted a less than flattering picture of the workers:
“None of our pitmen at Thornley save money. I don’t think there are four men in the colliery who have put by a penny. They do not like gardening as they do at other pits. Mr Wood, one of the proprietors, offered last year a 10 acre site for garden ground but not one-sixth part of it was used and even that was badly attended to. The steadier men here earn £50 per year, clear wages, besides what their boys earn which is from 10d to 3s a day, which the parents receive until the boy begins to ‘hew’ for himself.”
In 1844 the Durham and Northumberland miners came out on strike in protest at the harshness of their Bond conditions. The owners had made the yearly Bond a monthly one, then if union agitators were identified, the owners could get rid of them quickly instead of having to wait until the end of the year. 68 Thornley miners were arrested at the beginning of the strike and sentenced to six weeks imprisonment but were later acquitted on a technicality. They returned home as heroes but the Bond remained in place.
The strike continued and those miners who were willing to work were harassed, intimidated and in some cases severely beaten until they too ceased work and joined the Union. Police were called to Thornley to stop the women from stealing coal from the heap. The coal owners brought labour in from Wales, Cumberland, Ireland and Cornwall to carry out the work of coal production and this just led to more trouble in the village. The cavalry and a company of infantry were despatched from Durham to camp at Thornley Hall in the event that the trouble got out of hand. The soldiers were there to protect the villages of Thornley, Cassop, Coxhoe, Kelloe, Wingate and Castle Eden at the first sign of riot.
The owners used their ultimate weapon against the men—evicting them from their homes and eventually after 20 weeks the strike collapsed largely owing to the owners dirty tricks.