WORK by two of County Durham’s best known mining artists, Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness, feature in a new exhibition which opens today exploring the relationship between the Bishops of Durham over several centuries and local mining communities.

Pitmen and Prelates at Auckland Castle covers a period from the Industrial Revolution to the Thatcher era focusing on six bishops and featuring previously unseen objects, including a miner’s lamp damaged in the West Stanley pit disaster of 1909 which killed 168 men.

The first exhibition on this theme, it builds on last summer’s Birth of the Blues about the religious and community roots of Bishop Auckland Football Club.

Clare Baron, curator temporary exhibitions, said: “After the Birth of the Blues, we wanted to do something about this area’s industrial heritage, but specifically its links to the bishops and the castle, for good or bad, and which local people could feel a connection to and take a pride in."

“One of the earliest references to mining in the North-East is in the Boldon Book of 1183, which is a survey of the Palatinate similar to the Doomsday Book which didn’t cover the territory governed by what were at that time the Prince Bishops of Durham, who were virtually autonomous rulers."

Pieces on loan show what life was like underground and for those living in the tight-knit communities around the Durham pits.

The Ashington Pitmen Painters are represented along with work by members of the Spennymoor Settlement, founded in 1931 with funds from the newly established Pilgrim Trust to help alleviate the effects of the Great Depression.

It became known as the Pitmen’s Academy, with a sketching club that nurtured the talents of Cornish and, in the post-war era, those of McGuinness.

“We hope this exhibition will bring home how important coal mining once was in Durham and the North-East, the vestiges of which remain but which are becoming an ever more distant memory, as well as the vital role the bishops played," said Ms Baron.

Highlights include John Hodgson Campbell’s Under the Coaly Tyne (c1880-1890), the earliest known artistic impression of an underground mining scene, and Race Course at Durham (1887) by an unknown artist, painted in an Impressionist style, believed to be one of the first depictions of Durham Miners’ Gala.

Miners' Gala, 1976, by McGuinness is on loan from Barclays Bank, Durham, and Cornish’s undated Mount Pleasant street scene has been lent by his grandson, David Cornish.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Robert McManners and Gillian Wales, who have built up a sizeable collection of mining art and published extensively on this genre, including definitive biographies of McGuinness and Cornish. Their book, Shafts of Light (£14.95), featuring more than 70 coalfield artists, is available to buy.

The exhibition is in the King Charles Room where Bishop Westcott gathered pit owners and union representatives to end the strike of 1892.

Ms Baron added: “The mining heritage of County Durham is a source of pride for local people. We hope Pitmen and Prelates will encourage visitors and inspire a sense of connection with, and ownership of, Auckland Castle.”