Admire new Sunderland-made statue which will honour village's miners

The new mining statue made in Sunderland.

Sculpter Mark Burns Cassell, whose MBC Ceramics workshops are in Norfolk Street, Sunderland, has teamed up with artist Ron Lawson, from Fence Houses, to create the 10-foot high steel sculpture.

Its design is partly inspired by Mark’s granddad, former pitman Jack Malone, who worked underground for decades.

The statue will be unveiled in Langley Park, near Durham City, on Saturday at 11am to honour employees at the village’s former pit.

Mark, 31, who now lives in Sunderland, said: “I spent a lot of time in Langley Park with Jack and Jean, my grandparents. I have based some of the features of the miner on Jack, so it has been a poignant commission for me.”

One of the driving forces behind the memorial is the daughter of the last pitman to die at work in the colliery.

Christine Pringle was just two years old when her father Eric Weighill was killed at the age of 29 by a fall of stones while working in the Victoria seam at Langley Park colliery in February 1971.

The mine closed four years later.

Christine, a schoolteacher who still lives in Langley Park, is one of a five strong committee of women who formed the Langley Park Miners’ Memorial Group to raise funds for the statue.

She explained: “The only reason for the village existing was for the mine, just like so many other villages in County Durham.

“But it helps to understand the present if you know about the past.

“Other nearby villages have mining memorials to highlight their heritage, we thought Langley Park ought to have one too.”

Mark Burns Cassell outside his Sunderland studios.

Group chairman Julia Dixon’s grandfather, Tommy Gardner, who also worked at Langley Park colliery, was jointly awarded the Daily Herald Heroism Medal in 1947 for rescuing a fellow miner trapped in the pit.

She said: “We were delighted that Mark could design the sculpture because of his strong family connections to the Langley Park mining community.”

Dr Lawon, 57, who runs Ron Lawson Fine Art, is also a lecturer in executive coaching and leadership at Cumbria University.