As I have already mentioned, transport and travel was one difficulty facing a club secretary. Others revolved around club members' employment and their working conditions. The working week was much longer then. For many this involved Saturdays too and obtaining time off was generally a non-starter apart from the fortunate few who might have a benevolent employer. Co. Durham in those days was known as 'King Coal'. There were more than 100 mines and they provided the largest, and in many places the only source of employment.
Some clubs regularly left and then re-entered the League. During this period the following clubs played in the League:- Belmont Triangle, Dunelm, Esh Winning, Langley Park, Malton Colliery, Ushaw Moor, Waterhouses, Mainsforth, Dean Bank A, Dean Bank B, Brancepeth, Bearpark, Eldon and Peases West.Some clubs regularly left and then re-entered the League. During this period the following clubs played in the League:- Belmont Triangle, Dunelm, Esh Winning, Langley Park, Malton Colliery, Ushaw Moor, Waterhouses, Mainsforth, Dean Bank A, Dean Bank B, Brancepeth, Bearpark, Eldon and Peases West.
Langley Park became the first League Championship winners and were the most successful team winning the League title six times. The first five of these wins were consecutive. Other winners were Ushaw Moor, Dene Bank A and Brancepeth Welfare A (twice winners).
The unsteadiness of the first decade continued with extra clubs joining but
others dropped out of the League with regularity so the numbers of members was never consistent for very long.
It is perhaps well to consider here the background into which bowls, a leisure activity, fitted.
Industry in its heaviest form, gave employment to the bulk of the County Durham population. Fundamentally, shipbuilding, iron and coalmining and the manufacture of mining machinery provided the backbone of the county's economic resources. The contribution made to Britain's war effort by the worthies of County Durham during six years of toil and sweat was magnificent. The work of these men, both by hand and by brain, did much to keep this country equipped with the sinews of war.
This fact is all the more surprising when it is remembered what a load of bitterness these same miners and shipbuilders carried with them, almost up to the outbreak of hostilities. No county in England was worse hit by the depression that began about 1930. Nobody who would understand County Durham today can do so unless he understands exactly what those years of depression meant to the industrial areas. This luckless area, unplanned, unlovely, without character, form or civic integration, a sordid product of one of the meanest and most grasping ages in all history, nevertheless supported a population on whose labours a large part of the wealth of England had been founded. To it, in the 1930's came unparalleled economic catastrophe.
It is not my task here to describe in detail this awful disaster, but it has so seared the life of County Durham that it cannot be altogether omitted. I must, therefore give three instances of what the depression meant to this area. "Witton Park and Woodside. Total population two thousand six hundred. Six hundred and seventy persons, or practically every soul available for work, is on the live register, and nearly half of them drawing neither Unemployment Benefit nor Transitional Payments"
(i.e. having outrun qualification for them by reason of long unemployment).
