Projects

Recent Projects

2024/2025 Digital Project
The Birtley Heritage Group have been collaborating with Skills4Work to produce a series of video presentations based on old photographs from our archive collection and images donated for the project. This working partnership has been very successful, helping us to share the history of Birtley with a wider audience.

War Graves
Using photographs taken by the Skills4Work group themselves, we remember the men buried in Birtley who are commemorated by the CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) with this video presentation.

Lest we forget.

Leisure and Recreation
A look at how the people of Birtley spent their leisure time outside of work. Birtley had a variety of sports clubs including cricket, bowls, tennis, golf and football, and several cinemas to entertain people.

Prize Bands, an open-air swimming pool, and the local pubs are all featured here in this presentation - and much more put together by Skills4Work.

Birtley Belgians
In 1915 to overcome the shortage of artillery shells, munitions factories were built across the country known as National Projectile Factories (NPF). Armstrong-Whitworth were commissioned to build two factories in Birtley, one to produce shells and the other cartridge cases.

An extraordinary agreement was made between the British and Belgian Governments; Belgian officials would manage the NPF and recruit a Belgian workforce of experienced men withdrawn from the front, civilian refugees and wounded and disabled soldiers. To house the Belgian workers and their families, a unique settlement was built called Elisabethville. This is their story.