The parish of Thorpe Thewles and Grindon has evidence of settlements and industrial activity from the Bronze Age. Agricultural developments, the introduction of the railways and traditional manufacturing are all evident in the area.

The group wish to engage the whole community, including local school children, in the researching and recording of historical information relating to the parish of Thorpe Thewles and Grindon.

Through a series of events, exhibitions and an oral history exercise the memories, reminiscences and photographic material of local residents will be captured. This, combined with desk and archive research will inform the publication of an 80 page, full colour booklet which will be made available free of charge to every household within the parish. Volunteers will undertake professionally led training in research and archiving techniques.


About The Group

The Thorpe Thewles History Group was established in 2005. The inspiration behind the group was the discovery of a set of photograph albums. These containing pictures of social events mainly sponsored by the church that had taken place in the village of Thorpe Thewles (formerly in County Durham). The original idea was simply to add names to these pictures for the benefit of future generations.

A small group of villagers began to meet and soon became hooked on finding out more about the history of Thorpe Thewles and the surrounding locations within the local Parish boundaries (i.e. Grindon Parish in the Tees Valley, formerly part of County Durham). The group interests soon grew to cover a wide range of local history topics from the famous Thorpe Thewles iron age settlement, the ancient Lords of Thorp Thewles, Wynyard and Fulthorpe, the local railways, the Londonderry connection plus the local schools, pubs and Churches. The list became longer and longer as more fascinating facts emerged.

Various proposals were made for the direction the group's researches might take. We also wanted to find meaningful ways to record our discoveries. We settled on compiling a book so that people could have a permanent record of the history of Thorpe Thewles and Grindon parish.

We still needed a great deal more information, anecdotes and local photographs to play a part in our research so in 2006 we held an exhibition of our early work, and invited people to bring along photographs and documents that we could electronically scan for future use. The exhibition was concluded with a film shown by a local farmer showing his family working on their farm during the 1940s and 50s. This event was a huge success and attracted over 70 people, all of whom said it had been most enjoyable.

Since holding our initial exhibition each group member has chosen specific aspects of village life and history to research, the final aim being to each write chapters on our selected topics and to take or find further photographs to illustrate our work. We hope to involve others in as many ways as possible in our group's project and would welcome anyone with an interest in anything related to the history of Grindon Parish to contact and/or join us.

If you would like to attend one of the groups meetings we would be pleased to see you. The group meets on the first Friday of each month in Thorpe Thewles Village Hall. Meetings commence at 7:30 PM.