Grange Villa - History

History

Grange Villa was built to house miners; Stone Row first, then the top block of Queen Street, followed by the rest of the streets. The Handen Hold Colliery was to the north of the village past the Binney burn toward West Pelton. It closed in 1968; the Alma Pit, to the south of the village toward Twizell Burn, closed in the 1950s. A railway line ran from the Alma Pit, behind Front Street towards the Pelton Fell landings. Miners were still using carbide lamps to work by down the mine in the late 1950s.

There was a cinema, snooker hall, fish shop, a clothing factory, several newsagents, bakers, and fruit shops, as well as the Nobles Organisation that started in Grange Villa with Joe Nobles Bingo. Between Pine Street and Stone Row there were gardens where pigs and pigeons where kept, to help with the local farming. The First old age pensioners' club house was built by the old men of the village at the bottom of East Street in the late 1950s. Grange Villa Pavilion Cinema showed the first taking movie in the area and Bud Flanagan appeared live when it opened. The land between Stone Row and Pine Street used to be the rear gardens of those properties and were purchased by the local council during the early 1980s on compulsory purchase orders.