Aidan Doyle's paintings of Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery

Category	Art
Dates	Early 1990s: Doyle photographs underground at Blenkinsopp Castle. 2015: Breaking Coal at the Face. 2016: Men Riding Up The Drift. 30 November 2018 - 5 January 2019: exhibition at Newcastle Arts Centre.

Oil paintings by the North East artist Aidan Doyle from photographs he took underground at Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery in the early 1990s, among them Men Riding Up The Drift (2016) and Breaking Coal at the Face (2015), part of his series on mining and miners.

The mining history in this record

Around the closure of the big North East coastal collieries in the early 1990s, Aidan Doyle photographed in and around the pits, and remembers the kindness of the miners who took him round Wearmouth, Westoe, Easington, Ellington and Blenkinsopp Castle collieries. Twenty-five years after the closure of the big coastal collieries he went back to those photographs to make a suite of paintings.

His Mining and Miners series includes two Blenkinsopp Castle subjects in oil on canvas, Breaking Coal at the Face Blenkinsopp Colliery (2015) and Men Riding Up The Drift at Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery (2016), and his exhibition at Newcastle Arts Centre from 30 November 2018 to 5 January 2019 showed a work titled Men riding the belts, Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery.

People

Aidan Doyle, painter.

Legacy today

Men Riding Up The Drift has been sold, and prints of it are available.

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.

Doyle painted Men Riding Up The Drift at Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery (2016) and Breaking Coal at the Face Blenkinsopp Colliery (2015) in oil on canvas. (documented fact) ¹
In the early 1990s Doyle photographed in and around the North East pits, including Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery, and later used the photographs for a suite of paintings. (documented fact) ²
A work titled Men riding the belts, Blenkinsopp Castle Colliery was shown at Newcastle Arts Centre in 2018-19. (documented fact) ²

Mines

Blenkinsopp Colliery — Northumberland
Aidan Doyle painted miners at work here from photographs he took underground in the early 1990s.

Sources

(primary) Mining and Miners (collection) — Aidan Doyle (artist's website)
(secondary) Aidan Doyle Exhibition 2018 at Newcastle Arts Centre — Newcastle Arts Centre

Record created: 1 October 2026 · Last researched: 4 October 2026