‘Durham’s other cathedral’: mining union hall reopens after £14m restoration

Considered one of world’s finest trade union buildings and famous for its ‘pitmen’s parliament’, Redhills was built on a grand scale

Outside the impressively grand, Edwardian baroque building in Durham are two wooden benches, each dedicated to men who died too young.

They were, the inscription reads, both “sacked and victimised” during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Yet they’re in grounds that look as if they might have been owned by rich, exploitative mine owners.