Dudley Colliery

Overview

A Northumberland steam-coal pit six and a half miles north of Newcastle, sunk from April 1854 and finished in November 1856, worked as the Dudley Pit of Cramlington Colliery and later of the Hartley Main group. The shaft went down 728 feet. In 1873 the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle found a small colliery with a large reputation — 170 hewers raising 450 tons a day of what Dudley men insisted was the best steam coal in the trade — and a village of just over a thousand people around it. It was still employing 499 when it closed in 1977, one of the last pits of the old Northumberland coalfield.

History

Sinking began at the Dudley Pit in the Low Weetslade royalty on 19 April 1854 and was finished on 4 November 1856. The colliery took its name, according to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle's 1873 account, from one of its principal owners, and was worked as part of Cramlington Colliery — Lamb, Potter and Scott's in the 1870s, Joseph Lamb & Partners in the 1880s, the Cramlington Coal Co. Ltd from the 1890s, Hartley Main Collieries Ltd from May 1929, and the National Coal Board from 1947. The Chronicle's reporter came out from Seghill by pony cart in the summer of 1873 and described a colliery of some eighteen or twenty years' standing, noted for the quality of its coal and for the infrequency of serious accidents, standing in open country with a view over most of the Northumberland coalfield — Seaton Burn and Dinnington to the west, Cramlington to the north, and to the east the monument at Earsdon to the two hundred and four killed at Hartley. It was a small colliery for its reputation: 170 hewers raising an average of 450 tons a day, working only the Yard seam, with a drift being put down from it to reach the thicker seam below. Most of the coal went away on the company's own waggonway past Seghill to Howdon Docks. The village held a little over a thousand people in stone rows, some owned by the colliery and some leased from private landlords, with a branch of the Cramlington Co-operative Society, Primitive and Wesleyan chapels, and a colliery school whose master, George Duncan, was also the village postmaster. Its enthusiasms were poultry, kitchen gardens, competitive bowling — the champion bowler Gledson lived at Dudley — and, to the reporter's disgust, pitch and toss. Two shiftmen were killed by an explosion of gas in the Low Main seam on 13 May 1875 (see Disasters, below), an accident the Inspector of Mines used to make the point that no special rules had been established at the pit even though it belonged to an establishment of six important collieries. Employment ran between six and nine hundred for most of the colliery's life, peaking at 894 in 1894, and the workings widened steadily from the Yard, Main Coal and Low Main into the Bensham, High Main, Beaumont, Top Five Quarter, Top Busty, Harvey and Maudlin. It closed in 1977 with 499 on the books, having outlasted almost all its neighbours.

Geology

The colliery worked the Coal Measures of the Northumberland coalfield in the Low Weetslade royalty. The 1854-56 sinking log, from a surface about 192 feet above Ordnance datum, records 728 feet of strata. For its first twenty years only the Yard seam was worked, with a drift being driven down from it in the 1870s to reach the thicker seam beneath; the returns later add the Main Coal, Low Main, Bensham and Lower Bensham, High Main, Beaumont, Top Five Quarter, Top Busty, Harvey and Maudlin, so that by the twentieth century the colliery was working through most of the local sequence.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

A single winding shaft of 728 feet, sunk between 1854 and 1856, standing within a stone's throw of the North Eastern Railway; most of the coal nonetheless went away over the company's own waggonway past Seghill to Howdon Docks for shipment. In 1873 the pit worked the Yard seam alone with 170 hewers for 450 tons a day, and a drift was being put down to the thicker seam below. The colliery was worked with naked lights in the 1870s: the Inspector of Mines wrote after the 1875 explosion that it would not have happened had locked safety lamps been in the men's hands. Dudley was one pit of six in the Cramlington establishment, and later part of the Hartley Main group, whose pits were linked by their own railways.

Closure

The Beaumont seam was abandoned on 29 December 1937. The colliery itself worked on until 1977, still employing 499 people in 1975 — by then one of the last survivors of the Northumberland coalfield north of Newcastle.

What remains

No description of what survives on the colliery site has been found. The village of Dudley remains, now within North Tyneside.

None identified in the sources consulted.

Redevelopment

None recorded in the sources consulted.

Nearby mines

• Hazlerigg Colliery — 3.8 km SW
• Seaton Delaval Colliery — 4.8 km NE, Northumberland
• Backworth Colliery — 4.9 km SE
• Hartley Colliery (Hester Pit) — 7.9 km E, Northumberland
• Bebside Colliery — 8.1 km N, Northumberland

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Disasters & major incidents

• Dudley Colliery Explosion, 1875
  13 May 1875 · Explosion · 2 fatalities
  Two shiftmen, George Clasper and William Davison, were killed by an explosion of gas in the Low Main seam of the Dudley Pit, Cramlington Colliery, on 13 May 1875. They had been sent with naked lights to lay tramway plates in an old gateway whose ventilation was impeded by a fall, and went further in than the deputy had examined. The Inspector of Mines found want of caution and an imperfect grasp of duties on all sides, and that no special rules had been established at the pit.

Recorded claims

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

• Sinking of the Dudley Pit in the Low Weetslade royalty began on 19 April 1854 and was finished on 4 November 1856, the shaft going down 728 feet from a surface about 192 feet above Ordnance datum. ^1,2
• The Newcastle Weekly Chronicle's 1873 account says the colliery took its name from one of its principal owners. ³
• In 1873 the colliery employed 170 hewers raising an average of 450 tons a day, working only the Yard seam, with a drift being put down from it to the thicker seam below; the village held a little over a thousand people. ³
• The pit stood within a stone's throw of the North Eastern Railway, but most of its coal went away over the company's own waggonway past Seghill to Howdon Docks. ³
• The colliery passed from Joseph Lamb & Partners in the 1880s to the Cramlington Coal Co. Ltd in the 1890s, Hartley Main Collieries Ltd in May 1929 and the National Coal Board in 1947. ¹
• Employment peaked at 894 in 1894 and stood at 499 in 1975, two years before the colliery closed. ¹
• The village had a branch of the Cramlington Co-operative Society, Primitive and Wesleyan chapels, and a colliery school whose master, George Duncan, also served as village postmaster and ran the savings bank. ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Dudley Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (primary) Account of the Strata sunk through in the Dudley Pit, Cramlington Colliery, Low Weetslade Royalty, 1854-1856 (An Account of the strata of Northumberland & Durham as proved by Borings & Sinkings, Volume C-E, 1881, sinking no. 0659) — North of England Institute of Mining & Mechanical Engineers, via the Durham Mining Museum
3. (secondary) Our Colliery Villages XXXVIII - Dudley, Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 19 July 1873 — Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, transcribed on Tyneside History

Record created: 3 September 2026 · Last researched: 4 September 2026