Tudhoe & Spennymoor Local History Society
Membership is £20.00 due to be paid in January of each year.
Next Talk - Monday 27th Jan 2025 at 7.30pm - Playing in the New Year with Father Smith - The Durham Cathedral Organ 1686-1873 by Richard Hird.
Held at St. David's Church Hall, Tudhoe Lane, Tudhoe, DL16 6LL. Members free, Visitors £4. Please note tea and biscuits will be served before the start of the meeting at a charge of £1.
Click to view our 2025 programme, also other events and on-line history talks.
To view details of these news items click on the link.
Bowes Museum have announced a major Cornish/Lowry exhibition from July 2024 - for more details click link Cornish/Lowry exhibition
Hosted by DurhamWeb.
Thanks to Sylvia who has identified some of the children on this photo of Page Bank School in 1950s.
L to R: John & Jeffrey Lynn (twins born 1944), Barry Nixon (b1944), ?, Rhoda Chaytors (b1944), Pauline Tennant (b1945).
Arthur Douglas Horner (4th Jan 1919-27th Oct 1944) - We have received a request from Jane who is helping a group, Overloon War Chronicles, to put faces and information to the names of those interred in the Overloon War cemetery, Netherlands, to tell their 'story'. Gunner Arthur Douglas Horner (4th Jan 1919-27th Oct 1944) was born and raised in the Spennymoor area and was killed in action in Overloon, Netherlands and is buried in Overloon War Cemetery along with 280 others. He was in the Royal Artillery.
Jane would like to find a photo of Arthur and to try to find any family members who might have any information on the family and Arthur's service. You can view the project so far at Overloon War Chronicles
For more information about the Horner family go to Requests for Information 2024
If you can help please e-mail tslhs@btinternet.com
The Society was formed in 1988 and its aims are to organise an annual programme of talks and outings and attend events promoting local history. For more details go to the Origins of the Tudhoe & Spennymoor Local History Society
Click to view our Time Line. - 2024 is Spennymoor Town Council's 50th anniversary year so we have produced a Time Line covering those years. This started as part of a much longer time line originally compiled by Eric Coombes. Hopefully we will be able to extend our new time line at a later date.
Click to view The War Comes to Tudhoe compiled by Harry R. Spence in 2013. Harry was a local historian who donated his archive to the society.
Photo Archive - over 1,000 photographs of Tudhoe, Spennymoor and surrounding areas.
These images are protected by copyright licensing regulations and are for personal use only, they cannot be copied, published or distributed.
Inspired by walking the many footpaths in her local area during lockdown, Sarah Semple from Durham University contacted Tudhoe and Spennymoor Local History Society (TSLHS) in 2020 to propose a collaborative and participatory project on investigating the origins and development of the medieval, early modern and modern settlements within Spennymoor township. Productive conversations with TSLHS have led to the co-production of a research project that will see a first season of investigation in August 2023 in Tudhoe village.
From 1st to 4th of August 2023, Durham University, with a small team of staff and students, undertook electrical resistance and magnetic surveys across the south east side of the village green. TSLHS and Durham University are particularly interested in relocating the site of the 19th-century free school marked on early maps at the southeastern end of the green. Tudhoe Green is also one of the longest known in County Durham and is certainly medieval in date and so the team are also excited to see if earlier archaeological features have been preserved beneath its extent.
We hope this is a first step towards a larger project and we are keen to welcome interested participants who would like to learn more about archaeological survey techniques and may be keen to join the team in further investigation of Tudhoe and Spennymoor.
On 23rd October 2021 a Blue Plaque was unveiled at 30 Clyde Terrace, Spennymoor, the birthplace of the Great War nurse, Sister Kate Maxey, by her great niece Elizabeth Varley.
Sister Maxey's decorations were the Military Medal, the Royal Red Cross (1st class) and the Florence Nightingale Medal.
Our film about medical services on the Western Front and the contribution of Spennymoor people to them is free to view on YouTube under a creative commons licence.
View the Behind the Lines film on YouTube.
To view photos of the Film Premiere, details of DVDs, Education packs and film presentations go to Behind the Lines.
Situated on the south side of the Wear Valley, midway between the ancient settlements of Bishop Auckland and Durham, Spennymoor only came into existence during the mid 19C. Previously, eight villages, all now satellites of this small market town, surrounded the open common known as the Spenny Moor. Most of these, including Tudhoe, already existed when the Boldon Book, the North East’s equivalent to the earlier Domesday Book, was compiled in 1183.
650 years later, exploitation of County Durham's mineral wealth, principally its huge reserves of coal, began to help satisfy the needs of Britain's industrial revolution. This resulted in the creation or expansion of many towns and villages in the eastern half of the County. Spennymoor is one such example of this change.
By 1840, coal pits were being sunk around the Moor, soon accompanied by houses to accommodate the ever growing number of miners. An iron and steel works quickly followed, established here to exploit the large quantities of coal now being produced around the expanding settlement. While never completely absorbing any of the villages, it is now physically linked to Tudhoe.
By the turn of the 20th Century coal and steel had long given way to service and manufacturing industries while the expanded town now also functioned more widely as a dormitory to the large coastal conurbations set around the mouths of the Tyne, Wear and Tees. For more details go to History.