A VILLAGE which lost its mining banner is hoping to reignite its heritage with a new community one.

The Cockfield Miners’ Banner was used in the 1940s by miners working at the village’s Gordon House Colliery but has since disappeared and all attempts to find it have proved fruitless.

And despite Durham county councillors, Heather Smith and Andy Turner, organising a public meeting to see how much support there would be for a new banner last July, only five people turned up and all had mixed views on the £30,000 project.

However, now the village is to have its very own community banner after the councillors agreed to fund a new one using their Neighbourhood Budget.

Both Cllrs Smith and Turner will contribute £2,263 from their budgets to cover the cost of the banner which will be made by Durham Bannermakers in partnership with Cockfield Primary School pupils and their families.

Headteacher, Kathryn Heatherington, explained how Durham Bannermakers artist, Emma Shankland, will host workshops with pupils to come up with a design for the banner while their families will also be helping them research key moments in the village between 1900 and 2015.

Local key notable figures such as famous surveyor and astronomer Jeremiah Dixon and Arthur Henderson, who was the Barnard Castle MP from 1903 to 1918 and three-time leader of the Labour Party, could also feature on it.

Miss Heatherington said the pupils were excited about the project, especially as they will be visiting Mrs Shankland’s studio in Durham, where she previously made an Olympic banner for the school.

The pupils will also get the chance to visit the Spennymoor Mining Museum to learn more about the history of the village’s mining past.

“It’s a great project and something we wanted to do but something as a school we could not have afforded to do,” she said.

Miss Heatherington said Mrs Shankland would begin her workshops next week and she hoped the banner would be finished by the end of April.

“We do a lot of work in the school about the heritage of the village and the children are really interested in it so the idea is that it stays in the school and is used whenever we have events,” she said.

“Hopefully we might even go to The Miners’ Gala in Durham with it too – it would be great to do that.”