A miner’s son with grand ambitions
Born Alan Armstrong on July 17, 1946, the actor grew up in a working-class household where his father worked as a coal miner – and both his parents served as Methodist lay preachers.
Annfield Plain was the home of respected actor Alun Armstrong. (Image: GOOGLE)
He attended Annfield Plain Junior School before moving on to Consett Grammar School, where a teacher first inspired him to try acting.
His breakthrough moment came in the lower sixth form when he played Petruchio in a school production of The Taming of the Shrew, a Shakespeare role he would go on to reprise years later with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
From bricklayer to RSC stalwart
Armstrong’s path to the stage wasn’t straightforward.
After feeling out of place at the National Youth Theatre summer school in 1964 because of his background and North East accent, he auditioned for RADA but was turned down.
He studied fine art at Newcastle University instead, but left after two years, taking on jobs as a bricklayer and even a gravedigger before finally committing to acting.
That perseverance paid off.
Armstrong went on to spend nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and made his screen debut in the acclaimed 1971 crime film Get Carter.
A career built on colourful characters
Armstrong has described his own approach to acting as playing “the full spectrum of characters from the grotesque to musicals.
“I always play very colourful characters, often a bit crazy, despotic, psychotic.”
That versatility earned him some of British theatre’s biggest honours: he originated the role of Monsieur Thénardier in the original West End production of Les Misérables, and won an Olivier Award for the title role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
On screen, he became a familiar face in period drama, appearing in six separate Charles Dickens adaptations, including as Inspector Bucket in Bleak House and Daniel Peggotty in David Copperfield.
Many viewers will know him best as the eccentric ex-detective Brian Lane in the long-running BBC series New Tricks, a role he played across more than 80 episodes between 2003 and 2015.
Armstrong also appeared in Our Friends in the North, one of British television’s most acclaimed dramas, and took on Hollywood roles in films including Sleepy Hollow, The Mummy Returns, and Van Helsing.
A lasting link to the North East
Despite decades working across London’s West End and international film sets, Armstrong’s Durham roots remain a source of pride for the region, and he’s recognised by groups including the Friends of Durham Miners’ Gala for his connection to the county’s mining heritage.
His son, Joe Armstrong, has since followed him into acting, continuing a family legacy that began in a small pit village in County Durham.
Context and history: from coal village to conservation area
Annfield Plain sits on a plateau between Stanley and Consett in County Durham, and its very name reflects its industrial past.
The “Plain” element originally referred not to the landscape but to an inclined plane built on the Stanhope and Tyne Railway in 1834, used to haul coal wagons down a steep gradient with a stationary steam winding engine, known locally as the Annfield Engine.
Coal mining in the area dates back to Tudor times, with shallow pits recorded as early as the 17th century, but it was the arrival of the railway in 1834 that transformed the area’s fortunes.
As deeper pits were sunk through the 19th century to meet growing industrial demand, the settlement expanded rapidly, and by 1856 the name Annfield Plain had taken hold as housing was built for the miners flooding into the area.
At its peak in 1901, the wider Annfield Plain area’s population reached 12,481, swollen by the mining boom, though this later fell back significantly as the industry declined through the 20th century.
The village grew handsome Victorian shops, several public houses, chapels and a parish church, alongside light industry including a brewery, mill and candle factory, giving it a genuine sense of civic identity beyond its collieries.
The last of the local pits closed in 1962, echoing the fate of mining communities across County Durham, though the legacy remains visible in the landscape and in local memory.
The former Annfield Plain Co-operative Store was even dismantled and rebuilt piece by piece at the nearby Beamish Museum, preserving a slice of the village’s Victorian high street for future generations.
It was against this backdrop of a proud, tightly-knit pit community that Alun Armstrong grew up, before Shakespeare and the West End called him away from County Durham for good.