Portrait of a Durham Mining Village

Shotton Colliery is one of the few remaining pit villages in South West Durham. After 150 years of production the seams are running out. A Month of Sundays was filmed in Shotton during the miners' strike in February, and shows a community under the twin stresses of the strike and the imminent closure of the pit. Each day is a Sunday - a time for rest and relaxation; but now particularly a time for the miners and their families to reflect on the way of life carved out by a century and a half of mining and on their hopes and fears for the future.

"A mining village - a community whose hearthrob is the colliery. People who live and think and have their being because of the colliery." - Headmistress
"George Bernard Shaw said to the miners 'Come out into God's daylight you fools' and we are enjoying the daylight and sunlight now, because we've never enjoyed it for a long, long time." - Coal-Miner
Commentary written by Sid Chaplin and spoken by John Woodvine