by Jane Hatcher
General Background History
The place-name has nothing to do with ferries! It comes from the Old English word “fergen” or hill, and means a settlement on a hill (1). The earliest recorded written reference to the place-name is in the Cartularium Saxonicum of 1256. The ancient village of Ferryhill developed around its long village green which runs east-west along its prominent hilltop site, running east from the Great North Road, from the 18th century the Darlington-Durham turnpike road. Some of the houses around the green have ancient origins, such as the Manor House in the south-east corner, which is partly of 17th-century date, restored in 1891, with one or two Gothick-style windows. In the garden wall in Church Lane is a 17th century gateway with a coped gable and ball finials, and the Latin inscription "sic siti lietantur lares" reproduced on an ornamental panel. Of the several buildings of 18th century date, the best is Village Farmhouse, of 1739, on the north side of the green (2).
The Dean and Chapter of Durham were important landowners here, owning the mineral rights, and having a court house here, as well as providing a small chapel dedicated to St. Ebbe and St. Nicholas (3). In 1829 the Durham architect Ignatius Bonomi designed a new chapel of ease for the growing settlement. Ferryhill was made a separate parish, with its own parish registers, in 1843, having previously been part of Merrington parish (4), and a new vicarage was built in 1846, in the Elizabethan style of architecture (5). When the chapel of ease became too small to serve the growing population, it was replaced in 1853 by a larger building, the Church of St. Luke, designed by Mr. G. Pickering of Durham, which stands just south of the village (6).
Expansion in the 19th century saw the provision of more facilities, including a National School for the growing number of children in the larger community, and several public houses to serve travellers on the Great North Road. The 1898 6 inch Ordnance Survey maps marks Well House Brewery on the road just north of Ferryhill. A modest Town Hall was built in 1867 on an island in the centre of the village green, and was joined by other buildings, including the Methodist Chapel of 1909 (7).
About a mile east of Ferryhill ran the Bishop Auckland and Ferryhill Branch of the North Eastern Railway, with a station serving Ferryhill. In the late 19th century a new industrial settlement grew up here, which became known as Ferryhill Station. As well as terraces of housing, schools and chapels were founded here, and at the nearby village of Chilton. The 1923 6 inch Ordnance Survey map shows terraces of housing being built along the road running south from the east end of Ferryhill village towards Ferryhill Station and Chilton, particularly in an area called The Broom.
West of the Great North Road, the large new settlement of Dean Bank grew up along Merrington Road, much of it colliery housing built by Messrs. Bolckow, Vaughan and Company, who restricted occupation to the families of men working in their huge Dean and Chapter Colliery (8). Here were built the Chapter Literary Institute in 1907 and County Council schools in 1908, both in a vaguely Art Nouveau style of Edwardian architecture, also an Italianate Baptist chapel (9). The 1923 map also shows extensive areas of allotment gardens.
By 1938 (10) Ferryhill had experienced further considerable growth. As well as more shops and commercial businesses, there were now more leisure facilities such as cinemas, theatres, circulating libraries, billiards clubs etc.
Mining History
The monks of Durham and Finchale priories mined coal in the Ferryhill area in the medieval period, so it has one of the longest histories of coal-mining in the county as work began here early and continued late. There was a great deal of mining activity here in the 19th century. Ferry Hill Old Pit was sunk by Wood and Co. in 1833, and Ferryhill High Pit about 1873 (11). Chilton was a mine still with only one shaft in 1862 (12). These were, however, shallow workings, and as the accessible coal became exhausted, the pits closed down. The 1898 6 inch Ordnance Survey map shows several disused coal workings around Ferryhill, including Broom Colliery to the south-east, and Chilton Colliery to the south-west. Extraction of the rich supplies lying deeper had to wait for more advanced technology early in the 20th century, which provides an example of coal mining in some localities being re-activated after a period of closure.
The most significant deep mining development in the area was Bolckow, Vaughan and Company’s sinking of the Dean and Chapter Colliery in 1902 (13). This had a notable piece of equipment, the twin horizontal steam winder of No. 1 shaft. Built by Markham of Chesterfield in 1902, this had an immense 44 feet diameter winding drum, with 32 inch diameter cylinders x 72 inch stroke (14). The Dean and Chapter Colliery was linked underground to that at Chilton, where mining activity resumed in 1872 (15). Both finally closed in 1966, but they had ceased to be economically viable a few years earlier. Dean and Chapter Colliery was kept open on social grounds, in spite of losses of nearly �10 million, because sacking its 3,000 men would have made a ghost town of Ferryhill. Instead the men were gradually transferred to other collieries and other mining areas, the last 220 leaving in 1966. By this time the enormous stark 50-acre pit heap, a prominent feature alongside the then A1, had been landscaped and grassed over (16).
(1) Victor Watts, A Dictionary of County Durham Place-Names, (2002), p.43.
(2) Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: County Durham, (1983), pp.272-3.
(3) William Whellan & Co., History, Topography and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham, (1856), p.249.
(4) Kelly’s Directory of Durham and Northumberland (1910), p 161.
(5) William Whellan & Co., History, Topography and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham, (1856), p.250.
(6) William Whellan & Co., History, Topography and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham, (1856), pp.249-250.
(7) Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: County Durham, (1983), p.272.
(8) Kelly’s Directory of Durham and Northumberland (1910), p. 161.
(9) Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: County Durham, (1983), p.273.
(10) Kelly’s Directory of Durham and Northumberland (1938), pp. 114-6.
(11) DCRO, Durham Collieries, (2001), p. 33.
(12) Richard Fynes, The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, (1873/1986), p. 206.
(13) DCRO, Durham Collieries, (2001), p. 27.
(14) Frank Atkinson, The Industrial Archaeology of North-East England vol.2 (1974), pp. 282-3.
(15) DCRO, Durham Collieries, (2001), p. 23.
(16) Peter A. White, Portrait of County Durham, (1969), p.166.