Gallery > Parks and bandstands > Bandstand restoration horden welfare park

Horden Welfare Park was created in the 1920s as the flagship park for Durham coalfield under the Mining Act of 1920 with a deduction of one penny per ton of coal produced being taken from the wages of its miners.

Following the closure of the colliery in 1986, Horden Parish Council took responsibility for the park and became its owners on behalf of the community in 1991. To this day the layout remains largely unchanged, although some of the uses have changed and the outdoor unheated swimming pool has long gone.

Funding was sort and work began in February 2004 including the restoration of the original bandstand, the creation of new ornate wrought iron gates based upon an original design, the replacement of over 15,000 shrubs, formal bedding displays based upon original 1920s planting displays, the creation of two new play areas.

The Bandstand

When Horden Welfare Park was refurbished, as a regeneration project, we were asked to replicate the original railings around the bandstand. The originals were assumed to be of wrought iron, but the condition of the surviving piece was not good, and the majority had been replaced with welded steel, itself in poor condition.

Investigation in the workshop found the cause. The original railings, made in 1929 were in fact a mixture of wrought iron and steel components, doubtless all sold as iron at the time, but time has found them out, as the wrought iron components remained in very good condition, while the steel were advanced in corrosion, in the salty seaside atmosphere.

The Gates

As part of a lottery funded regeneration scheme, two sets of new gates were required for Horden Welfare Park. As with all HLF projects, the brief was to recreate the ironwork in puddled wrought iron exactly as it would have been prior to wartime salvage.

• Location

  : Tyne and Wear