Woodhorn is home to the best known work by the artists of the Ashington Group who also became known as the Pitmen Painters after Lee Hall’s successful play which tells their story.

In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favor of practice, the pitmen began to paint.

He said: “The permanent Ashington Group Gallery at Woodhorn Museum houses paintings up to 1972 but the pitmen painters were prolific until the early 1980s.

It was built for its workers by the Ashington Coal Company. Hall, who also wrote Billy Elliott, drew on the book by William Feaver, Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984.