Roddymoor Colliery

Overview

A west Durham colliery at Roddymoor, north of Crook, sunk in 1844 and worked until 1963. It was the core of Pease & Partners' Peases West group, whose coke ovens and fire-brick works at Bank Foot made the 'Pease's West' coke that gave the colliery its second name. Five shallow seams were worked, the deepest only 34 fathoms down. Coking and household coal were the main products, with fireclay raised from the 1920s and witherite — the barium carbonate mineral — appearing in the returns through the 1950s. Employment peaked at 1,675 in 1950. The village of Roddymoor was built for the men who worked here and at the coke ovens.

History

A sinking was put down at Roddymoor in 1844 by R. A. Heslop to work the Main Coal or Brockwell seam. By the 1850s the colliery belonged to Joseph Pease, Joseph Whitwell Pease and Joseph Pease & Co., and from the 1860s to Joseph Pease & Partners, the Darlington Quaker family firm whose interests ran across the west Durham coalfield. The colliery worked as part of a group — the Emma, Lucy and, from August 1864, Wooley pits — under the collective name of Peases West. Whellan's Directory of County Durham described the operation in 1894. Pease & Partners then had five pits in the parish of Crook, together with a large number of coke ovens and a fire-brick works at Bank Foot; among the ovens were Simon-Carves byproduct ovens, whose gases were worked up into sulphate of ammonia, benzol oil and coal tar. Between the collieries, brickworks, ovens and shops the firm employed over two thousand men aged sixteen and over in the parish alone. At Roddymoor itself five seams were met: the Main Coal, 3 feet 9 inches thick at 34 fathoms; the 'B' seam, 2 feet 4 inches at 25 fathoms; the Five Quarter, 3 feet 6 inches at 16½ fathoms; the Ballarat, 1 foot 10 inches at 12½ fathoms; and the Yard, 3 feet, at 11 fathoms. Employment ran between six and seven hundred through the 1890s, passed a thousand by 1910 and reached 1,675 in 1950, the colliery's largest recorded workforce, before falling to 642 by 1961. Ownership passed to the National Coal Board at nationalisation in 1947. The Durham Mining Museum's list of men killed at the colliery runs to 66 names and is explicitly incomplete; among them are Joseph Campbell, a child of four who in 1901 fell into a pond into which the residual products of the coke ovens were run, and Joseph Hodge, a helper-up of fifteen who in 1906 ran after a rat underground and struck his head on a stone. The colliery closed on 10 August 1963.

Geology

The colliery worked the Coal Measures of the west Durham coalfield in a shallow, closely stacked sequence: five bedded seams within 34 fathoms of the surface, the deepest of them the Main Coal or Brockwell at about 204 feet and the shallowest, the Yard, at only 11 fathoms. Later returns add the Clay, Harvey, Victoria, Busty, Three Quarter and Tilley seams, so that over its life the colliery took coal from most of the local sequence rather than concentrating on one horizon. Seatearth fireclay beneath the coals was worked in its own right from 1921 and fed the firm's fire-brick works. From 1950 to 1961 the returns also record witherite, the barium carbonate mineral of the North Pennine mineral veins, raised alongside the coal.

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

Workings

A group of shafts rather than a single pit — the Emma, the Lucy and the Wooley, the last sunk from August 1864 about two kilometres to the north-east — worked under the collective name Peases West, together with drifts including the Roddymoor Old Five Quarter Drift. The seams were shallow and thin, some under two feet, and the inspectors' accounts of deaths at the colliery are dominated by falls of stone at the face and by haulage: boys of eleven and thirteen crushed between tubs and the side of the way, or run over on engine planes. Most of the output went to the firm's own coke ovens at Bank Foot rather than to market as raw coal.

Closure

The Old Five Quarter Drift was abandoned on 19 September 1891, its plan lodged as no. 2,651, with the reason recorded as all the available coal being exhausted; the Brockwell seam was abandoned in 1934, under a plan covering Peases West and Wooley across the parishes of Brancepeth, Crook and Billy Row, Willington, and Brandon and Byshottles. The colliery itself closed on 10 August 1963, the workforce having fallen from 1,675 in 1950 to 642 in 1961.

What remains

Nothing of the colliery or the Peases West coke ovens survives above ground. Roddymoor village remains: Durham County Council's 2026 settlement character study describes it as a small clustered settlement whose original four rows of terraced housing were built for workers at White Lea Colliery and the Peases West coke ovens, expanded by Dale Terrace and a Methodist chapel in the late nineteenth century and by East Terrace in the early twentieth. Post-war clearance demolished the original terraced blocks and replaced them with Myrtle Grove and Chestnut Grove to the north, leaving a legible historic core of a few terraced streets with rear yards, enclosed by the recreation ground and allotments. The village was designated Category D and, with the pits and the Pease paint factory gone, is now a dormitory settlement for Crook.

None identified. The colliery and coke-oven site has been cleared; the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century terraces of the village it served partly survive.

Redevelopment

The village was substantially rebuilt after the war, with the original terraces replaced by Myrtle Grove and Chestnut Grove and recent infill beside Chestnut Grove and opposite Roddymoor Close. The former Pease paint factory is now a private residence.

Related mines

• Chilton Colliery — Both were worked by Pease & Partners, the Darlington Quaker firm whose west Durham group centred on the Peases West coke ovens at Roddymoor.

Nearby mines

• Witton Park Colliery — 6.0 km S
• Bearpark Colliery — 11.1 km NE
• Harehope Gill Mine — 13.1 km W
• Chilton Colliery — 13.6 km SE
• Frosterley Marble Quarries — 13.7 km W

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

Recorded claims

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

• A sinking was put down at Roddymoor in 1844 by R. A. Heslop to work the Main Coal or Brockwell seam. ¹
• Whellan's 1894 Directory of County Durham records five seams at Roddymoor: the Main Coal, 3 feet 9 inches thick at 34 fathoms; the 'B', 2 feet 4 inches at 25 fathoms; the Five Quarter, 3 feet 6 inches at 16½ fathoms; the Ballarat, 1 foot 10 inches at 12½ fathoms; and the Yard, 3 feet at 11 fathoms. ¹
• Pease & Partners worked five pits in the parish of Crook alongside a large number of coke ovens and a fire-brick works at Bank Foot, some of them Simon-Carves byproduct ovens yielding sulphate of ammonia, benzol oil and coal tar, employing over two thousand men aged sixteen and over in the parish. ¹
• Employment reached 1,118 in 1910 and peaked at 1,675 in 1950, falling to 642 by 1961. ¹
• The Roddymoor Old Five Quarter Drift was abandoned on 19 September 1891, plan no. 2,651, all the available coal being exhausted; the Brockwell seam was abandoned in 1934. ²
• The colliery's returns record witherite raised alongside coal and fireclay from 1950 to 1961. ¹
• Roddymoor's original four rows of terraced housing were built for workers at White Lea Colliery and the Peases West coke ovens; post-war clearance demolished the original blocks and replaced them with Myrtle Grove and Chestnut Grove. ^3,4

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Roddymoor Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (primary) Catalogue of Plans of Abandoned Mines for Roddymoor Colliery — Coal Authority catalogue, via the Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) Settlement Character Study: Billy Row, Roddymoor and Stanley Crook (2026) — Durham County Council, Design and Conservation Team
4. (secondary) Roddymoor — Wikipedia

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