Band from former pit village wins national brass championship for first time in 61 years

The last time Kirkbride Colliery Band won the national championship, in 1965, 1,800 men worked underground in the County Durham village and the band rehearsed in a room above the pit baths. On Saturday night, 33 years after the colliery closed and with its bandroom now a converted Methodist chapel, the 28 players walked on to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall and won it again.

The band, conducted by Ian Thwaite, a 44-year-old music teacher who grew up three streets from the pithead, scored 97 out of 100 for its performance of the set test piece, a 17-minute work for brass by the contemporary composer Rhiannon Vaughan called Seam. The three adjudicators, who listen from a screened box and do not know the order of play, described the performance as “immaculate in intonation and daring in its dynamics”.

“I knew we’d played well because the cornets were in tune at the end and that never happens,” Thwaite said afterwards, surrounded by players still in their red jackets and clearly still in shock. “When they read out second place and it wasn’t us I thought, right, we’ve finished fifth or something. Then it went very quiet.”

Kirkbride is one of a dwindling number of bands that still carry the name of a mine. Of the 20 competing in the championship section this year, only four had colliery names and only one, besides Kirkbride, draws most of its players from the village it is named after. The band has survived on fees from concerts, a modest grant from a coalfield regeneration charity and the support of a village that, Thwaite says, “would rather lose the pub than the band, and we’ve nearly lost the pub twice”.

The youngest player on stage was 15-year-old Ellie Nattrass on second horn, whose grandfather played in the 1965 band. The oldest was Dennis Coulthard, 74, on the bass trombone, who joined in 1968 and has never missed a national final. “I’ve been to this hall 40-odd times to come fourth,” he said. “I’m allowed a drink tonight.”

The victory carries a modest prize of £2,000 and a considerable prestige: the champions are invited to a European contest in the spring and will record a broadcast concert for radio. For a band whose annual budget is about £40,000, the practical rewards matter. “The horns are 30 years old,” Thwaite said. “The euphoniums are older than some of the players’ parents. If this gets us a set of instruments then it’s worth more than the trophy.”

Back in Kirkbride, where the result was announced over the speakers at the village social club to a room of about 200 people, the parish council has already asked whether the band would consider a homecoming concert. “They’ll get one,” Thwaite said. “Once I’ve slept.”