Members of Durham City Planning Department captures the final days in operation of Bearpark Colliery near Durham City before closure in April 1984.

The parish of Bearpark stands a mere three miles from the centre of Durham City. It derives its name from a medieval priory the remains of which sit on the current village and was the summer retreat for the Bishop of Durham called the Priory of Beaurepaire meaning 'beautiful retreat'. Until the 19th century agriculture was the main industry in the area, but this changed in 1872 when the Bearpark Coal & Coke Company, owned by Darlington Quaker Theodore Fry, sunk a coal mine. The colliery and village both soon expanded and by 1894 the mine was working three shafts and two seams named Busty and Hutton while the village had a school, two chapels as well as a literary institute.

At its peak in 1925 Bearpark employed 1367 men, but by nationalisation in 1947, it was the last working colliery for the Bearpark Coal & Coke Company Ltd. By the time the mine eventually closed on the 6th April 1984 in was producing a mere 750 tonnes of coal a week, a fraction of what was being produced by the larger collieries along the coast such as Easington. When news of the closure did come through it was not a shock and the unions did not oppose closure. Ironically, the mine had been idle since the Miners' Strike started four weeks earlier, the remaining 49,000 tonnes of coal sitting beside the pithead ready for collection once the strike was over. Most of the pit machinery was abandoned with only the cage and cables being salvaged before the shafts were capped.

Today the site of Beapark Colliery is a broadleaf woodland planted in 2012 and managed by the Woodland Trust. Called Miners' Wood it is a part of the Lanchester Valley railway path and is a rich habitat for wildlife.

Record of the last working days of Bearpark Colliery, showing the lamp cabin, the surface buildings, the shafts and headstocks, pit heaps, colliery houses and machinery and recounting the history of the colliery until its closure in April 1984.