Beamish Colliery

Overview

A County Durham colliery worked for just over two centuries, from the sinking of the Edge Pit in January 1763 to closure in March 1966. It passed from the Eden family to the Joiceys, who built one of the great Durham coal-owning businesses around it, and raised coking and gas coal through a shifting group of shafts. It should not be confused with the reconstructed colliery at Beamish Museum, which stands on the same estate.

History

Sinking at the Edge Pit began on 25 January 1763. The Fifth and Sixth pits followed in 1784, along with the Second Pit, which outlasted almost all of them and worked until 9 November 1962. The Water Pit was sunk from February 1832, an Air Pit opened in 1849, and the Mary Pit — the name by which the colliery is often still known locally — opened in 1883. Sir John Eden held the colliery in the 1780s and John Murton Davidson in the 1830s, but from the 1850s it was in the hands of James Joicey, and then James Joicey & Co. The Joicey family built one of the largest coal-owning businesses in the North East around holdings of this kind, and in 1924 Beamish passed to Lambton, Hetton & Joicey Collieries Ltd. The National Coal Board took it over at nationalisation in 1947. The annual returns from the 1880s onward record coking and gas coal from the Air, Mary, Second and Busty pits. Mining ceased at Beamish on 26 March 1966. The Joicey company's own mining archive, covering 1843 to 1929 and including plans of the coal mines and of cottages at and near Beamish, was deposited at Newcastle University Library by Lord Joicey in February 1967, the year after the colliery closed.

Geology

The colliery worked the Coal Measures of the north-west Durham coalfield. The Busty seam, named in the colliery's own output returns, is one of the lower productive coals of the Durham sequence, and the coals here were of coking and gas quality rather than the household or steam coals raised further east — which is what tied the colliery to the coke and gas trades that the Joicey business was built on.

Workings

A group of shafts sunk and abandoned across two centuries: the Edge Pit from 1763, the Fifth, Sixth and Second pits from 1784, the Water Pit from 1832, an Air Pit from 1849 and the Mary Pit from 1883. The returns name coking and gas coal from the Air, Mary, Second, Busty, Apple and Stanley pits at various dates, several of them working in the same year.

Closure

The Second Pit closed on 9 November 1962 and mining at Beamish ceased on 26 March 1966.

What remains

The colliery has been cleared and the ground returned to agriculture and woodland. The Beamish estate on which it stood is now occupied by Beamish Museum, whose colliery exhibit is a reconstruction assembled from a drift mine on the site and buildings brought from elsewhere in the region — not the surviving fabric of this colliery.

No significant surface remains of the colliery itself are recorded.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Sinking at the Edge Pit began on 25 January 1763. (high) ¹
• The Fifth, Sixth and Second pits followed in 1784, the Water Pit was sunk from 7 February 1832, an Air Pit opened in 1849 and the Mary Pit in 1883. (high) ¹
• The colliery passed from Sir John Eden in the 1780s to John Murton Davidson in the 1830s, to James Joicey from the 1850s, to Lambton, Hetton & Joicey Collieries Ltd in 1924, and to the National Coal Board in 1947. (high) ^1,2
• The Second Pit closed on 9 November 1962 and mining at Beamish ceased on 26 March 1966. (high) ^1,2
• The Joicey Coal Mining Archive, covering 1843 to 1929 and including plans of the coal mines and of cottages at and near Beamish, was deposited at Newcastle University Library by Lord Joicey in February 1967. (high) ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Durham Mining Museum: Beamish Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Beamish Colliery (1763-1966) — Co-Curate, Newcastle University
3. (primary) Archive Collection JJ: Joicey Coal Mining Archive — Newcastle University Special Collections

Record created: 3 September 2026 · Last researched: 3 September 2026