Mickley Colliery

Overview

A Tyne valley colliery at Stocksfield, returning coal from 1855 and the larger of the two pits that gave the Mickley Coal Company its name — the other being Prudhoe, three miles east. It was worked by Cookson, Cuthberts & Liddell in the 1850s and by the Mickley Coal Co. from the 1880s, selling coking and gas coal and later household and steam. Employment ran between 500 and 660 for forty years before collapsing to 228 in 1935.

History

Mickley returns coal in the Mineral Statistics from 1855 and was working by 1854. Cookson, Cuthberts & Liddell held it in the 1850s; by the 1880s it belonged to the Mickley Coal Company, which took its name from this pit and also worked Prudhoe and West Wylam, all three under the manager Thomas Bates. It was much the larger of the company’s two Tyne valley collieries. In 1894 Mickley employed 640 people against Prudhoe’s 385, and it held that scale for four decades: 576 in 1900, 542 in 1910, 616 in 1921, 659 in 1925 and 660 in 1930, with between 400 and 560 of them underground. The output was coking and gas coal from 1894, with household and steam grades added by 1925. Then it fell away sharply — 228 in 1935, of whom 162 worked below ground — the same collapse that took Prudhoe from 316 in 1924 to 61 in 1930. Both pits belong to the contraction of the Northumberland coalfield between the wars rather than to any local failure.

The pit had an eighteenth-century predecessor. From 1765 the Wrightson estate opened a sea-sale Mickley Colliery, with a waggonway to staiths leased at Stella on the Tyne in May 1764; its steward Samuel Aislabie's letters to the widowed Isabella Wrightson record the first coals going down to the staiths in 1766, a steam engine bought for the new Spindle Bush pit at Risemoor in 1774, and the colliery probably working into 1781, when the waggonway closed. The Victorian colliery below Mickley Square had a brickworks beside it, whose kiln survives at the lower end of the village.

Geology

The Coal Measures of the Tyne valley on the north-western edge of the Northumberland and Durham coalfield, where the productive seams lie shallow — the same ground and the same seams as Prudhoe three miles east. The combined Mickley and Prudhoe abandonment plan covers the Six Quarter, Towneley, Five Quarter, Yard, Horsley Wood and unnamed seams worked between 1816 and 1863, so both pits were taking up workings older than either of them.

Workings

A shaft colliery with a drift alongside it — the Mickley Drift is listed among the company’s workings — in ground already threaded with earlier workings. The abandonment plans catalogued in 1934 are shared with Prudhoe under the heading "Mickley and Prudhoe", covering the parishes of Chopwell in Durham and Prudhoe, Prudhoe Castle, Wylam, Eltringham, Mickley, Hedley and Dukes Hagg in Northumberland; they were held by W. Armstrong and Sons of Collingwood Street, Newcastle, having formerly been with A. Mundle and Son.

Closure

The closure date is not known. The colliery last appears in the returns read here in 1935, employing 228 people against 660 five years earlier, and the plans of the combined Mickley and Prudhoe workings were catalogued in 1934 — which suggests the end came in the mid-1930s, but the catalogue entry is not a closure record and the Durham Mining Museum leaves the closure field blank. Co-Curate has the colliery pass to the National Coal Board, and Wikipedia has it working into the 1940s.

What remains

No specific present-day description of the colliery site has been established. Mickley is now a village between Stocksfield and Prudhoe and the pit ground has been built over or returned to farmland.

Related mines

• Prudhoe Colliery — Two pits of one company three miles apart: the Mickley Coal Co. worked both under the manager Thomas Bates, and their abandonment plans are catalogued jointly as "Mickley and Prudhoe". Mickley was much the larger — 640 employed in 1894 against Prudhoe’s 385.
• Thirlwall Colliery — Both owned by the Mickley Coal Company, which took Thirlwall over in 1918.

Disasters & major incidents

• Mickley Colliery Roof Fall
  2 March 1927 · Explosion · 2 fatalities
  On 2 March 1927 two brothers, both experienced stonemen, were killed at Mickley Colliery, in Northumberland, when a misfired shot exploded as they drilled out its stemming.

Recorded claims

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

• Mickley Colliery at Stocksfield was owned by Cookson, Cuthberts & Liddell in the 1850s and by the Mickley Coal Co. from the 1880s. The company also owned the Mickley Drift and the Prudhoe and West Wylam collieries, managed by Thomas Bates in the early 1880s. ^1,2
• Mickley employed 640 people in 1894, of whom 489 worked below ground, against 385 at Prudhoe in the same year. It employed 576 in 1900, 542 in 1910, 616 in 1921, 659 in 1925 and 660 in 1930. ¹
• Employment fell to 228 in 1935, of whom 162 worked underground — a third of the 1930 figure. ¹
• The colliery returned coal from 1855; its output is listed as coking and gas coal from 1894, with household and steam grades added from 1925. ¹
• The abandonment plans are catalogued jointly as "Mickley and Prudhoe", covering the Six Quarter, Towneley, Five Quarter, Yard, Horsley Wood and unnamed seams worked between 1816 and 1863, under the parishes of Chopwell in Durham and Prudhoe, Prudhoe Castle, Wylam, Eltringham, Mickley, Hedley and Dukes Hagg in Northumberland. ³
• Mickley colliery was opened in the 1850s by Cookson, Cuthberts and Liddell and owned from the 1880s by the Mickley Coal Company, later passing to the National Coal Board; the brickworks beside it made the 'Mickley bricks' found across the district, and the kiln survives at the lower end of the village. ⁴
• An earlier Mickley Colliery was opened on the Wrightson estate as a sea-sale colliery from 1765, its waggonway running to staiths at Stella leased in May 1764; a steam engine was bought in 1774 for the new Spindle Bush pit at Risemoor, and the colliery probably worked into 1781, when the waggonway closed. ⁵
• Mickley Moor Colliery worked from 1766 to about 1781, and its successor just below Mickley Square worked into the 1940s; there were also drift mines at West Mickley and in the woods east of the Square. ⁶

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Mickley Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (primary) Mickley Coal Co., Ltd. — Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) Catalogue of Plans of Abandoned Mines for Mickley Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
4. (secondary) Mickley (Co-Curate, Newcastle University) — Co-Curate
5. (secondary) These Grand Affairs: the development of the Mickley Colliery, by John Goodchild (British Mining 61, NMRS, 1998, pp. 110-118) — Northern Mine Research Society
6. (secondary) Mickley, Northumberland (Wikipedia) — Wikipedia

Record created: 8 September 2026 · Last researched: 24 September 2026