A former mining community in north-east England kicked off this year’s celebrations for its eight-century-old feast yesterday.

More than 8,000 people lined the streets as a carnival procession led by Houghton-le-Spring’s pit union banner launched the festivities.

The small Roman town, midway between Durham and Sunderland, had a colliery between 1823 and 1981, employing 2,000 mineworkers at its peak.

Former Durham mining communities — despite reeling from the Tories’ butchery of the coal industry in the 1980s and ’90s — have kept or recreated their pit union banners, maintained by well-organised banner support groups.

Mining union banners feature in an exhibition which is an integral part of the 10-day feast, along with mining memorabilia such as pit lamps and other equipment.

This evening, local actors will perform She’s Fired, a play based on the Seaham colliery disaster of September 8 1880.

The disaster killed 164 men and boys in the small town just five miles from Houghton.

The colliery was owned by the Marquess of Londonderry, whose fortune was built on the suffering and exploitation of mineworkers and their families.