This is a facsimile edition of a book long out of print written by a former Durham Miner Laurie Moran and first published in 1988. It examines in depth the life and times of Brandon Colliery, a County Durham Pit Village from 1856 to 1960.It's a truly monumental work, a year by year commentary on Brandon with a staggering level of detail. It captures both the minutiae of life weddings, births, deaths, disease, accidents and crime combined with mini biographies of local people, descriptions (often brutal) of work down the pit mixed with events local and national, stories, jokes and banter. The book's subtitle "Portrait of a Colliery and its People" is probably more apt than its title.The author Laurie Moran sadly passed away in 2008 entries from 1916 follow his fortunes and the last few pages of the book see Laurie leave the Pit to start out on his own account.Laurie spent some ten years researching the book working his way through more than 6000 weekly editions of the local newspaper, the Durham Advertiser to put the book together.The book walks the reader year by year through the evolution of a Durham Pit Village and in many ways the whole of society from open fields in the mid 19th century to the closure of the last pit.