Eden Colliery

Overview

The Consett Iron Company's pit at Leadgate, sunk by Edward Richardson in 1844 and worked for 136 years until the last shift on 18 July 1980. It raised coking coal for the Consett furnaces from the Hutton, Busty, Brockwell and Towneley seams, employed nearly 1,200 in 1925, and killed thirty-eight named men, three of them in a firedamp explosion in 1927. An Andy Goldsworthy earth maze now stands where the pit buildings were.

History

Eden Colliery was opened in 1844 by Edward Richardson on the north-east side of Leadgate, and passed within a few years to the Derwent Iron Company and then to its successor, the Consett Iron Company, which bought the Derwent concern in 1864 and built the largest steel works in the north around Consett. The colliery fed those furnaces: household and manufacturing coal in the Lists to 1921, coking, household and steam coal from 1925, coking and gas coal at nationalisation in 1947 with an output of 209,000 tons, and coking coal alone by the 1970s. Whellan's directory of 1894 found the pit, then fifty years old, working the Hutton at only thirty feet down, seven and a half feet thick with a band of stone, and the Main coal; the Five Quarter and Main had been abandoned in 1883 and reopened, and the Busty came in by 1910, the Brockwell by 1921 and the Towneley by 1930. There were two shafts, the Eden for coal and men and an air shaft a mile east at Stoney Heap, with a drift between them into the Hutton and Little Coal; the Castle Drift was counted with the colliery from 1930. Employment grew from 158 in 1883 to 314 in 1910, 874 in 1921 and a peak of 1,172 in 1925, held between 860 and 950 through the 1930s and 1950s, and fell to 565 in 1965, 283 in 1970 and 194 at closure. Ron Ellis, who started as an apprentice electrician in 1950 when nearly a thousand men were employed, remembered coal from the drift hauled out by rope on the heapstead, three-shift working and a mile's walk bent double with a tool bag to reach a broken coal-cutter. The railway link to South Medomsley closed in 1964. The pit had mined under Billingside for 136 years when the National Coal Board closed it on 18 July 1980, the reserves exhausted, the same year the Consett steel works shut. Thirty-eight deaths are named. Two men, James Brown, 18, and Joseph Crowther, 42, were killed on 15 February 1915 when frozen gelignite cartridges being thawed on a fire-bucket exploded, and three more were seriously hurt; the manager pleaded guilty to providing no warming pan. On 7 November 1927 an explosion of firedamp in the Towneley drift killed the fore-overman John Davison, 74, and the masons Andrew Dickson and his son Andrew, 49 and 17 (see Disasters, below). George Young was killed in 1952 when a second fall came down as help reached him.

Geology

North-west Durham Coal Measures: the Hutton, Main, Five Quarter, Brass Thill, Shield Row, Busty, Brockwell, Towneley, Little Coal and Harvey seams are named across the Lists, with fireclay worked in 1965.

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

Workings

The Eden shaft and the Stoney Heap air shaft, a drift between them, and the Castle Drift from 1930. Hewing and putting into tubs in the nineteenth century, coal-cutters and face conveyors by the 1930s, rope haulage on the heapstead for the drift coal; a mechanical fan house at the air shaft.

Closure

Closed by the National Coal Board on 18 July 1980 with 194 employed, the reserves exhausted according to a former electrician's memoir; the last seams returned were the Brass Thill, Busty and Low Main.

What remains

The pit buildings were cleared and in 1989 Andy Goldsworthy's earth maze, the Jolly Drovers Maze, was built on the site on the line of the C2C cycle route; a 2012 photograph shows it grassed and no longer trimmed. The air-shaft fan house at Stoney Heap survives, and reed beds and lagoons there now treat water pumped from the old workings.

The Stoney Heap fan house and air shaft; the earth maze on the main site; mine-water treatment lagoons.

Redevelopment

The colliery site carries the 1989 Goldsworthy maze and the C2C cycle route; mine-water treatment reed beds and lagoons were built at Stoney Heap.

Nearby mines

• West Stanley Colliery — 6.0 km E
• Healeyfield Mine — 7.0 km SW
• Beamish Colliery — 7.9 km E
• Craghead Colliery — 7.9 km E
• Butsfield Quarry — 8.4 km SW

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

Disasters & major incidents

• Eden Colliery explosion, 1927
  7 November 1927 · Explosion · 3 fatalities
  At about 6.45 on the morning of 7 November 1927 firedamp exploded near the top of a rise drift from the Busty seam to the Towneley seam at Eden Colliery, Leadgate, killing John Davison, the 74-year-old fore-overman, and the masons Andrew Dickson, 49, and his son Andrew, 17. The Towneley had never been known to give off gas. The inspector traced the flame to a match struck near an oil vessel in a drift that had filled with firedamp after its air was cut off, and the manager, under-manager and a deputy were fined for negligence.

Recorded claims

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

• Opened 1844 by E. Richardson; owners the Derwent Iron Co. and Consett Iron Co. Ltd in the 1840s, Edward Richardson & Co. in the 1850s and the National Coal Board from 1947; last shift 18 July 1980. ^1,2
• 158 in 1883, 270 in 1894, 314 in 1910, 874 in 1921, 1,172 in 1925, 929 in 1935 including Castle Drift, 951 in 1950, 565 in 1965 and 194 in 1980. ¹
• Hutton and Main in 1894 (Whellan), later Busty, Brockwell and Towneley; household and manufacturing coal to 1921, coking coal thereafter, 209,000 tons in 1947. ^1,3
• Thirty-eight named deaths, including two killed by a gelignite explosion on 15 February 1915 and three by a firedamp explosion on 7 November 1927. ¹
• An Andy Goldsworthy earth maze built in 1989 stands on the site of the pit buildings; the Stoney Heap air shaft and fan house survive. ^3,2,4

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Eden Colliery — Durham Mining Museum — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Eden Colliery — South Pelaw Junction — South Pelaw Junction
3. (observational) Eden Colliery Memories From Sixteen Year Old Boy — Leadgate Village — Leadgate Village
4. (observational) The Jolly Drovers Maze at Leadgate (Geograph photo 3224907, 2012) — Geograph
5. (observational) Former coal mine site (Geograph photo 5349473) — Geograph
6. (secondary) Consett Iron Company — Wikipedia — Wikipedia

Record created: 12 September 2026 · Last researched: 12 September 2026