Cambois Miners' Welfare Institute (The Tute)

The miners' welfare institute in Ridley Terrace was the social centre of Cambois while the colliery worked, and stood empty for more than a decade after it; since 2023 it has run again as The Tute, an arts centre and community hub in a Northumberland village with no shop, no post office and barely a bus.

The mining history in this record

Cambois, pronounced Cammus, is a former mining village on the south-east Northumberland coast, its street facing a disused railway line that cuts it off from the sea. Before the colliery closed, the social centre of the village was the Miners' Welfare Institute in Ridley Terrace. The building dates from 1929, with a decorative barrel roof, a wooden floor and a set of odd side rooms, and in the pit's day it held brass bands, film nights and union meetings.

After the pit went, the institute emptied. It had been unused for more than a decade when the dancer and performance maker Esther Huss and the playwright Alex Oates, who had moved to Cambois in 2019 knowing nobody, began using it as a rehearsal space. She started a dance group and he a writing group, leafleting the doors; interest built slowly, and in 2023 the building reopened as an arts centre and community hub called The Tute. For the first three years they worked unpaid and raised money through community funds, until they could register as a charity.

People

Esther Huss, dancer and performance maker, and Alex Oates, playwright, who reopened the building as The Tute; its trustees Tim Rubidge, Jennifer Sayako Eddis and Tony Bowler; Liz Aggiss, who premiered Crone Alone there.

Legacy today

The Tute runs workshops, performances, exhibitions, art classes and a children's playgroup from the old welfare building, free to the local community and funded through the Community Foundation, the National Lottery and others; it is run by Huss and Oates on behalf of its trustees, Tim Rubidge, Jennifer Sayako Eddis and Tony Bowler. Its most ambitious undertaking is the Rude Health Festival, launched in 2024 under the tag-line 'Because Creativity is Healthy', which over two months mixes classes with performances and films indoors and in the landscape. The choreographer Liz Aggiss chose The Tute for the premiere of her show Crone Alone, having read about the place in a 2023 newspaper article — coming for a week, staying locally and running a workshop for the village dance group as a condition of the booking.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Before the colliery closed, the social centre of Cambois was the Miners' Welfare Institute in Ridley Terrace. (documented fact) ¹
• The institute was built in 1929, with a decorative barrel roof, a wooden floor and side rooms, and held brass bands, film nights and union meetings before the pit closures. (documented fact) ²
• The building, unused for more than a decade, reopened in 2023 as an arts centre and community hub called The Tute, run by the choreographer Esther Huss and the writer Alex Oates. (documented fact) ^1,3
• Huss and Oates moved to Cambois in 2019, used the hall as a rehearsal space and started a dance group and a writing group, working unpaid on community funding for three years before registering as a charity. (later recollection) ²
• The Tute runs workshops, performances and exhibitions free to the local community, funded through the Community Foundation, the National Lottery and others. (documented fact) ³
• The Tute launched the Rude Health Festival in 2024, a two-month programme of classes, performances and films. (documented fact) ^1,2

Mines

• Cambois Colliery — Northumberland
  The institute was the colliery village's own welfare hall and outlived the pit that built its community.

Real-world mining concepts used here

Miners' Welfare Fund

Sources

1. (secondary) Cambois — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Toot Tute (Lisa Wolfe) — Total Theatre
3. (secondary) The Tute Cambois — The Tute Cambois

Record created: 20 September 2026 · Last researched: 24 September 2026