Inside drug-ravaged ‘zombie’ town where crumbling homes cost little as £5k

IN a green space at the centre of Horden's maze of boarded-up houses and vacant shops stands Marra, a 9ft sculpture of a miner with his heart ripped from his chest.

It couldn't be a more fitting reflection of a community which has suffered the same fate.

Artist Ray Lonsdale's statue, erected in 2015 by Horden parish council at a cost of £19,000 to illustrate the demise of Durham's mining communities, couldn't have been placed in a more appropriate spot.

The coastal village entered a death spiral of decline that hasn't halted since the colliery closed in 1987, throwing 4,000 men on the dole.

In that 36-year period "nowt good has happened in Horden" according to one resident, who paints a grim picture of daily life in a village where the signs of decay are clear on every street corner.

It's a place plagued by drug use - "crack, smack, blues, yellows, they'll take anything" - and where even the wrecked and boarded up houses aren't safe from burglary.

Drug users have become so desperate that they are breaking in to steal any copper pipes and cables left behind to sell as scrap metal in the hope of raising enough cash for their next fix.

Statistically it is one of the most dangerous places in County Durham with 178.9 crimes per 1,000 people and 6,807 crimes committed in 2023.

The new Labour government, elected on a mandate for change, has its work cut out to turn around the fortunes of Horden, something the party was unable to achieve the last time it was in power.

But that's what residents here are demanding.

"We're sick of living like this," says Les Wright, 61, who formerly worked in security but is now in receipt of sickness benefit.

"This place is crazy and it's getting worse. People don't dare go out of their front doors at night because of all the crime, you could get mugged at any time during the day, let alone at night.

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[smith]

I started doing drugs years ago as a teenage, got addicted to crack. Spent my whole life fighting crack addiction. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Not until my mom recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 6 years totally clean. Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms.

[SiCrewe]

I'm sick of hearing about how "there's nothing for kids to do".
I live in a small town where there's drugs, teen pregnancy, vandalism, theft and there's "nothing for kids to do".... except 2 beaches within walking/cycling distance, a river, a forest, a swimming pool, a park (with a playground), tennis courts, a golf course, football fields, a bowling green and a skate park.

Kids don't act badly because "there's nothing to do".
They act badly because they've never been taught moral behaviour.

[lewisfruen]

Salute to the soldier/mechanic/entrepreneur Gentleman he is representing

[Simon-xciy]

The sun newspaper was against the miners back in the

[Susan-nmsx]

The further away from London, the less the government care, it’s disgusting. 🤬🤬🤬

[keithm]

For a council to spend £19, 000 erecting a statue of a miner with its heart ripped out, gives the area an incredibly bleak outlook on it's future....

[mariedavis]

The cats the prettiest thing about the place !!!

[leslieelizabeth]

We need more people like this Gentleman. Maybe communities need to work together. It’s easy for me to say this. But I mean no offence. My late father was a coal miner. We moved to OZ in the 60s.
It’s so sad to see what’s happened to the North. I felt safe as a child growing up in a mining community.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧🇦🇺

[smithmr]

You know it's rough when you need to nip to the shops in a TANK!

[mandriod]

Thatcher tore the heart out the UK’s working communities and did not have the foresight to help replace the dignity of good honest work for a quick buck, same as she treated everything else sell sell sell one quick fix with no replacement and no rebuilding. Now we have country on its knees with nothing left to sell.

[johnpawlowski]

Countless thousands of homeless people in this country and almost an entire town full of empty houses because neither the local council or law enforcement can be bothered, so sack every one of them, cancel their pensions and re-elect.

[michaelstevens]

I hope things go well for the Polish lady.

[colineaston]

❤I am 87 years of age an fought for this country. I am now disabled and cannot understand the present state of the country. Not what it was when I was young ?

[stievboyo]

Why does Labour want to build millions of new houses when there millions empty

[cultfiction]

I dont live too far from Horden. Its not too bad at all. You get used to the environment you are in. As long as you've got some good friendly locals around, you are laughing

[alwoo]

Its incredible the problem of closing all the mines caused still 40 years on .

[stuartfitch]

This just proves what I've been saying for a long time, that the housing problem in this country is just as much about location and it's a consequence of not levelling up as it is about the actual number of houses.

My own northern town is gradually going more and more the same way. There are houses that are boarded up that they can't sell or rent. I bought my own 3 bedroom semi detached house on a single person mortgage for £70k but if it was transplanted as is to London it would probably be worth about £800k. It has a 70ft long driveway, a detached garage, is about 1500sq ft because it is a large 50s built semi. My monthly mortgage payments are £250.

This is because local housing demand is very low because it is a town that is in the top third of England's most deprived towns. We get one third less the government investment per capita than the average. In recent years according to a recent study, we've lost 23% of all bus services.

In the town itself there are no professional, high quality jobs. It is all low paid, manual jobs working in factories on production lines for the minimum/living wage.

All this means that people from the outside don't see my town as a place to come to make a good life for themselves and raise a family. In addition to this you get all the local born children like my own neice who is starting at university this year studying Medical Research, when she has graduated she will move to one of our already overcrowded cities to take up that kind of job. That means we loose another one of our own children. So the town is gradually dying. The average person is older. The local employers are finding it harder and harder to recruit anyone because of the bizarre combination of low wages and not enough people applying for jobs.

So then you have this bizarre situation in the country where you have such as Bristol where people with decent paid jobs are living by the kerbside in a caravan because they cant afford the ridiculous local rents or even find anywhere to live to start with because 30 people are all fighting over the same flat to rent out at £2k per month whilst on my own town the average rent across all types of accommodation is £600pcm.

This is probably why despite people around the country saying there's a big shortage of housing and despite planning permission has been in place for years to build 6000 new homes on the edge of the town I live in, shovels have not yet broken dirt. They can't even find a developer willing to take the job on. So what is the point in building 6000 new homes in a town where many of the existing houses cant be sold? There is no point even if there is a nationwide housing shortage.

My belief is that if the good, well paid jobs were more evenly spread across the entire country then the people would spread out more and the existing housing we have could be used in a lot better way instead of having a large percentage of our population are trying to cram into just a small number of cities.

[suzannehaigh]

Thank you Thatcher, what a magnificent women. Could these not be "done up" for the homeless, thousands on the streets of Britain that are good honest people.

[itsbrilliant-btsv]

Jesus... switching on YouTube is so bloody depressing sometimes.

[rabbiswhy]

Bald and Bankrupt walked thru this hood.