Cheap houses, boarded-up terraces and bleak soundbites may draw clicks and views – but they strip Horden of dignity and context. This ex-mining community is more than a backdrop for tabloid headlines and social media videos: its story is one of pride, resilience and decades of neglect after the pit closed.
Horden
Youtuber Wandering Turnip, posted a video in 2023 about the social condition of the ex-mining village of Horden and the price of houses available there. The video has now had over 1.2 million views.
The video describes how many houses are available for £20,000 in what is described as “a boarded-up town”. We are then shown many of these boarded-up houses. It is also noted on the video that fifty or sixty years ago the town of Horden looked very different.
The youtuber goes on to explain that Horden is an ex-mining town, which once housed 4,000 miners from 1900 onwards. He also mentions that Horden once held the European record for the most coal hewed in one day, and this record was held for 30 years.
Indeed it has been recorded: “Horden Colliery, which was sunk in 1900 by Horden Collieries Ltd to mine undersea coal seams, was located in Horden, County Durham. On 9 May 1930, 6,758 tonnes of coal were mined at the colliery; at the time a new European colliery record for the most coal mined in a single day. It was one of the largest mines in Britain and at its peak the colliery employed 4,342 people in 1935. The colliery was closed on 28 February 1987.”
The video also mentions that in 1987 the mine was shut down and we see a statue in the local park entitled Marra. A miner with his heart taken out and a representation of human struggles. Our Youtube host tells us that “highly-skilled workers’ jobs disappeared”.
A plaque dedicates the statue to the coal miners of Horden, whose “fortitude and indomitable spirit, fuelled the industry of Great Britain”.
Boarded-up terraces
The video highlights how houses in the town are on auction, starting at £5,000, while there is a whole load of boarded up houses from the same auction house starting at £80,000 but no viewings are allowed so potential buyers can’t see inside them. We are told that the intention is to sell them to big investment companies.
A tour around the village, taking in an old coal mine cart in the park as another reminder of Horden’s proud past, leads us to the first of many boarded-up windows.
Interestingly, we see that there are printed doors and curtains on the covering boarding used on many of the empty houses, which at first glance can give the impression that the property is occupied.
The friendly nature of the local residents is mentioned several times by the youtuber, as illustrated by a conversation with one older resident who used to work at the colliery.
Horden explained through the locals
The unnamed resident explains that although he personally had no trouble living in Horden, the town had declined since the colliery closed. He recalled how people once took pride in their homes and how the village had been far busier, full of working men’s clubs and pubs, most of which had now disappeared. After the pit shut, some men found jobs in Peterlee factories while others took redundancy, but the closure had completely changed the town.
“The last twenty years, the drugs have took hold. There’s a lot of the younger generation on the drugs now. Not just the younger generation, some of the older ones and all. Not really old like, but in their forties and fifties.”
He described the beach as beautiful, though polluted in the past by coal waste tipped into the sea from the colliery, and reflected on his own forty years underground, acknowledging the hardship but valuing it as steady work. Looking back with affection, he pointed out that Marra, the name of the statue in the park, was a reference to a local affectionate term for a mate or work colleague.
A property viewing
The youtuber has arranged a viewing to look inside one house, priced at £39,950 by the estate agents. We are told that one property nearby has sold in the last year for between £22,000 and £28,000. Others sold in 2022 for around £30,000.
Inside the house walls were in a bad way, with wiring all over the place and indeed the house needs a complete re-wire. The stairs were said to “feel really, really weak”. There were two bedrooms, missing floorboards, glass scattered on the floor, a bath and radiator was pulled off the wall.
Researching the property market
I conducted my own research on Rightmove and found one terraced house for sale at £12 000, while another close to the northern edge of the town was for sale for £240 000.
Elsewhere I found a two-bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Horden for £65,000, with another terraced house for sale for £12,000. In addition, there were five two-bedroom terraced houses for £10,000, and six 2-bedroom terraced houses for as little as £9,000.
Comment
As can be ascertained from the words of the resident quoted above, Horden is a town with a proud history. Not only did the pit hold the European record for the most coal mined in a day for 30 years, but it also competed in the finals of at least one UK Brass Band Championships final.
It is also a town which has its own theatre, which recently put on a play to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the sinking of the pit at Horden on 23 August 1900.
It’s sad to see the town of Horden seen as either a dumping ground for people sent up from London or mocked as a “drug-ravaged ‘zombie’ town where crumbling homes cost little as £5k”, as it was by The Sun last year.
Rather, we should look at how this once proud town ended up in the situation it is in and try to find solutions to the problems there. The root cause of the problems is clear to everyone. The town was built for one reason and one reason only; to house the families of the 4,000 miners who worked at the local mine. Once the mine was shut in 1987, serious alternatives for employment should have been brought into the area, to provide the same level of skilled work as the mining used to do.
A town in need of love
That this hasn’t happened is the reason behind Horden’s problems. As the statue in the park shows, the closure of the mine ripped the heart out of the town. That doesn’t mean that the town should be now automatically doomed to some sort of grim future as little more than a nightmare place full of boarded-up houses.
Horden needs real investment, the kind that other towns in other parts of the country receive. After all, it has been waiting 40 long years now for its ‘levelling-up’ to take place. It is time it happened.
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