Peterlee - History

History

The case for Peterlee was put forth vigorously in Farewell Squalor by Easington Rural District Council Surveyor C.W. Clarke, who also proposed that the town was named after the celebrated Durham miners' leader Peter Lee. Peterlee is unique among the new towns which came into being after the Second World War in that it was the only one requested by the people through their MP – though whether a majority of the people living in the surrounding colliery villages actually wanted it to be built is disputable. It can be argued that the building of Peterlee was at the expense of such nearby colliery villages as Shotton Colliery, Wingate, Thornley and Wheatley Hill where development was deliberately suppressed by the local council in favour of the new town. The colliery village of Horden, however, suffered more; its proximity to Peterlee saw it lose all of its major services including police and fire stations to the new town. A deputation, mostly if not all working miners, met with the Minister of Town and Country Planning after the Second World War to put the case for a new town in the district. The minister John Silkin responded by offering a half size new town of 30,000 residents. Subsequently, they came largely from the surrounding villages in the District of Easington.

The Peterlee Development Corporation was established in 1948, under the direction of A V Williams. The original ambitious master-plan for towering blocks of flats by Berthold Lubetkin was rejected as unsuitable for the geology of the area which had been weakened by mining works and he resigned in 1950. George Grenfell Baines replaced Lubetkin and began to build quickly, resulting in buildings of poor quality construction. In a bold move Williams invited an artist Victor Pasmore to be head of the design team for the landscaping.

In 1975, Artist Placement Group had contacted new towns to set up the terms for artists to propose projects. The Development Corporation of Peterlee New Town responded and in 1976, Stuart Brisley was appointed. The project contained three distinct parts:

• to develop an ongoing process of collecting and disseminating information under the title History Within Living Memory
• to establish a publicly available history of the Development Corporation made in association with the Sociology Dept of the University of Durham
• to introduce a community workshop which began in 1977

In 2012, Stuart Brisley discovered that critical parts of the project developed in association with the Sociology Department of the University of Durham, amongst other items including large numbers of photographic material, were removed from the project by Artist Placement Group and sold to the Tate in 2004 without his knowledge or consent.