Boldon Colliery

Overview

Boldon Colliery was sunk by the Harton Coal Company in the Durham coalfield and began producing in 1869, four and a half miles north-west of Sunderland. The company built houses for its workers beside the pit, and the settlement that grew there in the 1870s took the colliery's own name — the village is still called Boldon Colliery. It worked gas coal for most of its recorded life, passed to the National Coal Board in 1947 and closed on 24 June 1982. The Durham Mining Museum records no disaster of five or more deaths here across the whole of its working life.

History

The Harton Coal Company sank Boldon in the Durham coalfield and it began producing coal in 1869, the sinking of the No. 2 pit being dated to 19 March of that year. The company built houses for the workers, and the village that grew up around the pit in the 1870s took the colliery's name. Harton Coal Co. Ltd held it through the 1890s and beyond, and the colliery appears in the output returns from 1882 onwards, working gas coal from 1894. It passed to the National Coal Board at nationalisation in 1947 and closed on 24 June 1982. Boldon had a reputation as a militant and radical pit, often at odds with the Durham union officials, and its men looked to their own: they supported the unemployed, the injured and the widows of the village, and built what is described as the first aged miners' homes in the country.

Geology

The colliery worked the Coal Measures of the Durham coalfield, sinking towards the Hutton Seam, one of the principal seams of the county. Its recorded output was chiefly gas coal, the grade valued for town gas manufacture. No source names the full sequence of seams worked.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

Two shafts, No. 1 and No. 2, the sinking of No. 2 dated 19 March 1869. The Durham Mining Museum holds a 1933 plan from the Colliery Engineer showing the disposition of the pits in the Harton Coal Co. Ltd group and the railway links between them, which is the clearest surviving picture of how Boldon sat within its company's system.

Closure

The colliery closed on 24 June 1982, under the National Coal Board. No source gives a stated reason.

What remains

The colliery has gone and the site has been cleared. The village it created survives and keeps the colliery's name.

No colliery structures are recorded as surviving.

Disasters & major incidents

• Boldon Colliery overwind, 1906
  24 June 1906 · Winding / Shaft Accident · 3 fatalities
  An overwind at the Harton Coal Company's Boldon Colliery, County Durham, on 24 June 1906 killed two shaftmen and a boiler fireman.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• Other accounts state the pit was sunk by the Harton Coal Company in 1866, the winning commencing to sink to the Hutton Seam on 19 March 1866, with coal produced from 1869. The Durham Mining Museum gives the same day and month but 1869. The two cannot both be right. (disputed) ¹

Recorded claims

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

• The Durham Mining Museum records the colliery as opened in 1869 and closed on 24 June 1982, with the sinking of the No. 2 pit dated 19 March 1869. ¹
• Other accounts state the pit was sunk by the Harton Coal Company in 1866, the winning commencing to sink to the Hutton Seam on 19 March 1866, with coal produced from 1869. The Durham Mining Museum gives the same day and month but 1869. The two cannot both be right. (disputed) ¹
• Harton Coal Co. is recorded as owner from 1869, Harton Coal Co. Ltd from the 1890s, and the National Coal Board from 1947. ¹
• The Durham Mining Museum's table of disasters with five or more killed at this colliery records none across its whole working life, though individual fatalities are listed. ¹
• The colliery is recorded in the Tyne and Wear Historic Environment Record as a coal mining site at West Boldon; the village that grew beside it in the 1870s took the colliery's name. ^1,2
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Boldon' (catalogue D1364, Brass Thill 'K', dated 1982). ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Boldon Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Boldon Colliery (Historic Environment Record 2567) — Tyne and Wear Historic Environment Record
3. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: BOLDON — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

Record created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 4 September 2026