Middlestone Moor Colliery

Overview

A small colliery at Middlestone Moor near Spennymoor that worked the Hutton seam with between eight and thirty-one men for some thirty-five years, from about 1930 to 1965.

History

Middlestone Moor Colliery lay at Middlestone Moor, in Middlestone parish near Spennymoor, seven miles south-south-west of Durham. An unnamed working is marked there on the Ordnance Survey map of 1924. W. Ellwood and then the Middlestone Moor Coal Company held it in the 1930s, when it had 13 men in 1930 and eight in 1935 working the Hutton for household coal; its Three Quarter workings were abandoned on 2 June 1937. The Spennymoor Coal Company had it in the 1940s, with 24 men in 1940 and 1945.

It stayed on the Hutton throughout, raising household and steam coal, with 28 men in 1950 and its largest workforce, 31, in 1955, falling back to 24. On the 1951 coalfield map the colliery is drawn above the legend for Leasingthorne. The Bottom Hutton was abandoned and the colliery closed in 1965.

Geology

Durham coalfield: the Hutton (Bottom Hutton in 1965), with Three Quarter workings abandoned in 1937.

Workings

Unknown.

Closure

The Three Quarter was abandoned in 1937; the colliery closed in 1965 when the Bottom Hutton was abandoned.

What remains

Unknown.

Redevelopment

Unknown.

Recorded claims

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

• From 1930 to 1965 the colliery worked the Hutton seam. ¹
• W. Ellwood and the Middlestone Moor Coal Co. held it in the 1930s and the Spennymoor Coal Co. in the 1940s. ^1,2
• The Three Quarter seam was abandoned on 2 June 1937. ³
• Middlestone Moor Colliery is shown, unnamed, on the 1924 Ordnance Survey and named on that of 1939. ²
• The colliery closed in 1965, its Bottom Hutton abandoned that year. ^1,4

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Middlestone Moor Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Durham Collieries: Middlestone Moor Colliery (Middlestone) — Durham County Record Office
3. (primary) Middlestone Moor Colliery: catalogue of plans of abandoned mines — Durham Mining Museum
4. (primary) BGS mine plan: Middlestone Moor, Bottom Hutton 'L2', 1965 — British Geological Survey

Record created: 6 October 2026 · Last researched: 6 October 2026