Types of Building continued ...

In addition to corrugated iron, the materials used for these missions or chapels or ease ranged from stone, like St Stephen's at Esh Winning, brick, as at St Aidan's in Birtley, to wood, like the elaborate church of St Agatha at Brandon Colliery, with its framework of ten triangles braced by the post and plank walling (11). There were other wooden missions at St Andrew' in Ludworth and St Francis' at South Shields.

Of the 17 precisely datable churches, the majority, 12, were built in the period 1890-1910 (six in each decade), and it seems likely that to this number may be added Byer Moor, which appears to have been built some time between 1894 and 1914. Of the five pre 1890 churches, Binchester was erected in 1876, West Pelton, Houghall and Chilton in 1877, and Tudhoe in 1880. Six church halls were built in the period 1890-1910 for social gatherings, meetings, and Sunday schools. To take one example, Waterhouses mission room was erected in 1891, 22 years after the chapel of ease had been built. It could accommodate 180 members of the Sunday school.

The efforts made to build Anglican churches or missions was, in part, the remedying of a deficiency, but also an attempt to combat the dominance of Nonconformity in the county. It is perhaps not surprising to find that many miners and their families living in the new villages were dissenters, and particularly Methodists, either as members of a Wesleyan, New Connexion, Primitive, or United Methodist Free Church society. To varying degrees the Methodist churches had been involved in political agitation for better social conditions, and certain of their members played leading roles in the development of the trade union movement. Several coal owners in County Durham were themselves Nonconformists, and gave support to the establishment of chapels in their villages. Societies developed from house meetings, to gatherings in colliery buildings, or schools, until sufficient funds were raised to establish chapels. The relative cheapness of a corrugated iron chapel was an added incentive towards their adoption. Once established, the process of missioning began, leading to the formation of circuits, and the creation of preaching 'Plans'. Methodism made considerable advances in Durham. Wesleyan Methodism spread from Teeside to Weardale in the 1740s, with John Wesley himself undertaking several preaching tours of the Dales Circuit, and the number of societies grew to a peak in the 1870s (12). The break made by the Primitive Methodists in 1810 led to the creation of the Hull district, incorporating much of Durham by the 1820s. The separation of Sunderland into a new circuit in 1824 led to further divisions as the century progressed, like Darlington, Westgate, Stockton, Wolsingham, St Helens Auckland, the Hartlepools, Shildon, Bishop Auckland, Crook, Waterhouses, etc., as societies were established and expanded.

Both Connexions built stone chapels in the lead mining and coal mining areas of the country, many in the 1870s and 1880s. Four Wesleyan and eight Primitive Methodist corrugated iron chapels were built in the period 1870-1910. The United Methodist Free Church built one in the 1870s; the Baptists built two in the same decade, the Congregationalists erected one in the 1860s and the Plymouth Brethren one by 1897. It is debatable whether the Nonconformists purchased corrugated iron chapels because they were cheap or because they reflected industrial asceticism.

The Elizabethan and later Penal Laws had had a damaging effect on what had been a staunchly Catholic society in County Durham, although a number of large landowning families retained their allegiance to the old faith. The potato famine of the mid 1840s led to massive emigration of Irish, and increasing numbers came to the developing Durham coalfield. Cooter records the number of Irish born in Durham rising from 5,407 in 1841 to 37,515 in 1871 (13). With natural increase they formed an important proportion of the county population, and many must have been Catholic.

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