Littleburn Colliery

Overview

A coking colliery at Meadowfield, two miles south-west of Durham, bored in 1840 and sunk in earnest from 1870 by the North Brancepeth Coal Company. At its height it was offered for sale in The Times with a battery of sixty-four Huessener ovens, a byproduct plant, its own generating station, eight and a half million tons of coal unworked and four hundred and eight workmen's houses. It was abandoned in 1935, reopened on the Low Main during the war, and closed for good in December 1950.

History

A borehole was put down from the surface to the Hutton seam at Littleburn in 1840, but the colliery as it came to be worked belongs to 1870, when the North Brancepeth Coal Company began sinking the Engineer Pit, twelve feet in diameter, from the surface to the Busty seam on 20 April; the Merchant Pit followed on 31 March 1871 and reached the Busty at 471 feet. The Miner Pit and the 12 Feet Pit belong to the same period. The company's other names for the place — North Brancepeth, and Little Burn in the museum's incident index — attach to the same site. Coking and manufacturing coal were the colliery's business from the start, with fireclay raised alongside into the 1920s, and employment ran between six and eight hundred from the 1880s to the 1920s: 648 in 1894, 772 in 1915, 779 in 1925. In March 1931 the company advertised the whole concern in The Times — 'Offer wanted for Littleburn Colliery near Durham, as going concern, drawing capacity 1,000 tons daily; a battery of 64 Huessener patent ovens with modern washing plant making 2,000 tons coke weekly; by-product plant and electrical generating station; 8,500,000 tons coal unworked; 408 workmen's houses' — a single sentence that describes the colliery better than any other source found. It did not save it. The Harvey and Brockwell were abandoned on 3 September 1931, work was discontinued in August 1930 and the colliery abandoned in July 1935 with 63 people left. It reopened on the Low Main during the Second World War under the Bearpark Coal & Coke Co. Ltd and then the Brancepeth Coal Co. Ltd, working 132 to 154 people through the late 1940s, and closed in December 1950.

Geology

The colliery worked the Coal Measures of central Durham. The 1871 sinking log for the Merchant Pit, from a surface only about 30 feet above Ordnance datum, reaches the Busty seam at 471 feet 8 inches and bottoms at 476 feet. The Hutton was the seam the 1840 borehole had proved, and it was worked out and abandoned in 1890 — the catalogue's reason is simply 'coal all worked out' — with a second Hutton abandonment in 1911 covering the Boyne, Cochrane, Engineer, Merchant and Miner workings. The Brockwell, Busty, Harvey and Low Main carried the colliery afterwards.

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

Workings

Four named pits — the Engineer, begun 20 April 1870, the Merchant of 1871, the Miner and the 12 Feet — with the Boyne and Cochrane workings named in the 1911 abandonment plan. The colliery's own coke ovens were its distinguishing feature: sixty-four Huessener patent ovens with a washing plant making two thousand tons of coke a week, a byproduct plant to recover what the coking drove off, and an electrical generating station, all offered together in 1931. The company also owned four hundred and eight houses for its workmen.

Closure

The Hutton was abandoned on 20 September 1890, all its coal worked out, and again in 1911 across the wider workings. The colliery was temporarily closed on 4 September 1925, discontinued on 18 August 1930, and the Harvey bottom section and Brockwell abandoned on 3 September 1931; the Low Main, Hutton and Busty were abandoned on 9 July 1935. It came back on the Low Main in the 1940s and closed in December 1950.

What remains

No description of what survives on the colliery site has been found. Meadowfield, the village the colliery served, remains south-west of Durham.

None identified in the sources consulted.

Redevelopment

None recorded in the sources consulted.

Nearby mines

• Bearpark Colliery — 3.9 km N
• Dean and Chapter Colliery — 7.6 km SE
• Thrislington Colliery — 7.8 km SE
• Willington Colliery — 7.8 km SW
• Sacriston Colliery — 8.4 km N

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

Disasters & major incidents

• Littleburn Colliery Shaft Accident, 1872
  5 February 1872 · Winding / Shaft Accident · 2 fatalities
  Two sinkers, Thomas Dove and Henry Kenney, were killed at Littleburn Colliery on 5 February 1872 when the winch rope ran amain — took charge and ran away — and knocked them out of the kibble they were riding, dropping them to the bottom of the shaft.

Recorded claims

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

• A borehole was put down to the Hutton seam at Littleburn in 1840; sinking of the Engineer Pit, twelve feet in diameter, began on 20 April 1870, and the Merchant Pit followed on 31 March 1871, reaching the Busty seam at 471 feet 8 inches and bottoming at 476 feet. ^1,2
• In March 1931 the North Brancepeth Coal Company advertised the colliery in The Times as a going concern with a drawing capacity of 1,000 tons daily, a battery of 64 Huessener patent ovens and modern washing plant making 2,000 tons of coke weekly, a byproduct plant and electrical generating station, 8,500,000 tons of coal unworked and 408 workmen's houses. ¹
• The Hutton seam was abandoned on 20 September 1890 with its coal all worked out, and again on 5 August 1911 across the Boyne, Cochrane, Engineer, Merchant and Miner workings; the Harvey bottom section and Brockwell followed on 3 September 1931. ³
• Employment ran from 648 in 1894 to 772 in 1915 and 779 in 1925, fell to 63 by the 1935 abandonment, and stood at 154 in 1950, the year of closure. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Littleburn Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (primary) Strata sunk through in the Merchant Pit, North Brancepeth New Winning, 1871 — North of England Institute of Mining & Mechanical Engineers, via the Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) Catalogue of Plans of Abandoned Mines for Littleburn Colliery — Coal Authority catalogue, via the Durham Mining Museum

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