Culture
Consett was the first town in the world to have a Salvation Army Corps Band. The band was formed in December 1879 and went out on the streets playing at Christmas. The original band consisted of just four players, bandmaster Edward Lennox and bandsmen George Storey, James Simpson and Robert Greenwood.
Consett is home to the Empire Theatre, one of County Durham's oldest theatres. Recently refurbished, the theatre stages variety acts, plays and a Christmas pantomime. The theatre also screens blockbuster films at times when there are no live performances.
Several pubs have at least taken names that reflect the town's steel-making past - the Works, the Company, and the Company Row. From its bygone days of a steeltown, with a huge reliance on rail, next to where the main railway station used to be is a club named the Station Club, now opposite a health centre. With the steelworks gone, visitors and inhabitants are beginning to realise the beauty of the picturesque views over the Derwent Valley, and Consett is becoming a popular place to live for commuters from Durham and Tyne & Wear looking for a taste of the country.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)