ABSTRACT
In 1948 Peterlee was born: to get miners away from the squalor of the pit head, yet 'reasonably accessible' to their work; to broaden their social horizons in a 'balanced community'. Peterlee came neither into being, not to re-house a massive over-spill population, nor as a counter-magnet to a conurbation or to house workers on an industrial estate, but to provide centralised development for a scatter of mining villages in what was then the most heavily populated Rural District in England. The scattered settlement pattern in the Easington district owed its origin almost exclusively to the development of the mining industry there during the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. Peter Lee begun his political life in Wheatley Hill in the Rural District and, since the town was predominantly to rehouse miners, the Council felt it would be a fitting memorial if it were to be named after him - Peterlee.
