Wheatley Hill cemetery was built in 1907 by Peter Lee, whose grave is within the cemetery. The cemetery and Chapel of Rest first appear on the third edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1919-26 (1). The chapel was renovated by the Parish Council in 2002 and converted into a Heritage Centre for the village (2). The Heritage Centre houses a permanent exhibition of an East Durham colliery home, set around 1919, but the centre also has temporary exhibitions about every six months. The village war memorial cross is now located just outside the Centre against the western wall but the building is known to contain at least two other memorials that have been transferred here from buildings of the village that have now closed (3-4).

One of these memorials is a clock. The clock was formerly in an octagonal case and was unveiled outside Wheatley Hill Boys School in 1950 along with two brass plaques that bore a dedication and names to men who fell in WW2. At some point later the clock was moved to the building that, until the 1970's, was the Royalty Cinema. The cinema became a DIY store and was then demolished, at which point the clock was moved to the Heritage Centre. When the clock went to the cinema building, the associated plaques were moved and attached to the village war memorial outside the Miners' Welfare Hall. When the village memorial came to its new location just outside the Heritage Centre the plaques were replaced by two stone slabs, unveiled in 2005 (3,5).