Hylton Colliery

Overview

A Wearside colliery at Castletown, sunk from 1897 on the site of a steel works and opened in 1900. By the 1920s nearly two thousand people worked here, and the pit was the spine of employment for Castletown. It closed on 13 July 1979. Its longest-lasting legacy is sporting: the miners' cricket club still plays, and the colliery welfare football club produced players who went on to Sunderland and West Ham.

History

Hylton Colliery, known also as Castletown Colliery, was sunk on ground that had held a steel works and, in the 1850s, a small shipbuilding yard. Sinking began in 1897 and the colliery opened in 1900, owned by the Wearmouth Coal Company. There were three pits — East, South and West. By the 1920s nearly 2,000 people worked at the colliery, providing the backbone of employment for Castletown and feeding an already dense supply chain on Wearside. The colliery passed to the National Coal Board on nationalisation in 1947 and worked for another three decades, closing on 13 July 1979. The workforce built institutions that outlasted the pit. The miners ran a cricket club, founded in 1906 as Hylton Colliery Cricket Club and still playing as Hylton Cricket Club in the Durham and North East Cricket League. The colliery welfare football club, Hylton Colliery Welfare, played in the Wearside League and counted Augie Scott and Ernie Taylor among its players; its junior team produced Harry Hooper and Bill Robinson, both of whom went on to Sunderland and West Ham United.

Geology

Hylton worked the Durham coalfield on the north bank of the Wear at Castletown, in the same concealed ground beneath the Permian Magnesian Limestone that the Wearmouth Coal Company's other Wearside pits exploited. No detail of the individual seams worked has been located in the sources read.

Workings

Three pits — East, South and West — sunk from 1897 on the site of a former steel works and opened in 1900.

Closure

Closed by the National Coal Board on 13 July 1979, after seventy-nine years of working.

What remains

The colliery site has been cleared and no structures are recorded as surviving in the sources read. Castletown remains, and the sporting clubs the colliery workforce founded continue: Hylton Cricket Club and Hylton Colliery Welfare F.C.

None recorded in the sources read.

Recorded claims

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

• Sinking began in 1897 on the site of a steel works, previously a small shipbuilding yard in the 1850s, and the colliery opened in 1900. ^1,2
• The colliery was owned by the Wearmouth Coal Company until 1947, when it was taken over by the National Coal Board. ¹
• There were three pits at the colliery: East Pit, South Pit and West Pit. ²
• By the 1920s nearly 2,000 people worked at the colliery, providing the spine of employment for the Castletown area. ²
• The colliery closed on 13 July 1979. ^1,3
• The miners at the colliery ran a cricket club, founded in 1906 and still playing as Hylton Cricket Club; the colliery welfare football club played in the Wearside League and included Augie Scott and Ernie Taylor, its junior team producing Harry Hooper and Bill Robinson, later of Sunderland and West Ham United. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Hylton Colliery — Wikipedia
2. (primary) Hylton Colliery (Castletown Colliery), Tyne and Wear Historic Environment Record — Tyne and Wear Sitelines
3. (secondary) Hylton Colliery (1900–1979) — Co-Curate, Newcastle University

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