Have you phoned up / emailed an admissions tutor for the History department there? They'd give you the best advice regarding this, as crappy as that sounds.
But from anecdotal evidence around this forum, it seems that History @ Durham University is very competitive and they expect stunning grades at even GCSE level (seemingly unusual for about 90% of uni courses, even for the good unis). I'm not sure how the department at that uni views mature students taking Access students.. or even the uni at all, I don't know if I've ever read about Access students up there.
Since you want to be close to Durham have you considered applying for Newcastle University? They offer History and they're pretty closeish to Durham, anyway.