Open questions: County Durham

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 136 such claims on 89 records. All regions.

Aykley Heads Colliery

• The pit is shown on the Ordnance Survey first edition of 1857. (disputed)
• Aykley Heads Colliery opened in the 1880s. (disputed)
• The pit closed between 1938 and 1942. (disputed)

Bearpark Colliery

• Bearpark Community Centre, a red brick building originally put up in 1921 as a miners' welfare hall, stands at the hub of the village with an old pit wheel in front of it as a memorial to Bearpark's mining history. (uncertain)

Black Prince Colliery

• Closed in the 1920s. (disputed)

Blackhall Colliery

• Wikipedia's account states that the first coal was drawn in 1913, a year earlier than the Durham Mining Museum's own 1914 commencement date. (disputed)
• The blackened beach was used for the climactic chase in Get Carter (1971) and, according to a 2023 account of the site's recovery, also as a location for Alien 3. (uncertain)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Blackhall' (catalogue D1360, Hutton 'L', dated 1974); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Brandon Colliery

• DMM also records that Brandon Colliery was sunk in October 1842, before its 1856 opening date. (uncertain)

Broom Park Colliery

• The colliery never began production of coal. (disputed)

Bryan's Leap Colliery

• Bryan's Leap Colliery closed in 1950. (disputed)
• Bryan's Leap Colliery closed in 1966. (disputed)

Burnhope Colliery

• Burnhope Colliery closed on 22 July 1949; the coal tubs commemorating it at the village war memorial gave the date as 1948. (disputed)

Burnopfield Colliery

• Burnopfield Colliery was first sunk in about 1725; another source gives 1742. (disputed)

Burtree Pasture Mine

• The Weardale Lead Company closed the mine in 1887, having raised 904 tons of lead concentrates. (disputed)
• Lead ore was returned from the mine in 1888 and 1890, and it was standing idle in 1894, 1896 and 1900. (disputed)
• The mine closed about 1980. (disputed)
• The mine was in operation until the 1980s. (disputed)

Byron Colliery

• Byron Colliery was sunk by the Waldridge owners in 1858 and worked until 1879. (disputed)
• Byron Colliery, at Edmondsley, was at work before 1857, and in the 1860s was held by Sowerby, Phillips and Co. (disputed)

Castle Eden Colliery

• Castle Eden Colliery succumbed to the economic depression in 1893 and reopened in 1900 only as a pumping station to assist the drainage of Horden and Shotton. (disputed)
• Castle Eden Colliery, sunk about 1840, closed in 1877. (disputed)
• The colliery, drowned out in 1892 and acquired by the Horden company in 1900, closed under the National Coal Board in February 1959. (disputed)

Chilton Colliery

• Chilton was originally a mining town called Chilton Buildings. The mine stood on the site of the present primary school, and the miners lived at Windlestone Colliery in terraces named Albert Street, Arthur Street and Prospect Terrace, known locally as the Five Rows. (uncertain)

Cocken Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Cocken' (catalogue 1446, Low Main, dated 1883); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Cold Knott Colliery

• The Woodifield Coal Co. Ltd owned the colliery in the 1910s. (disputed)
• The Cold Knott Colliery Co. worked it in 1911 and 1919. (disputed)

Coldberry Mine

• An oreshoot was worked between the late 1930s and 1953. (disputed)
• The Coldberry Lead Co. Ltd worked the mine until 1956. (disputed)
• Lead mining on Hardberry Hill continued until about 1955. (disputed)

Crow Trees Colliery

• The first cargo went aboard the brig Etherley. (disputed)
• The first cargo went aboard the brig Elizabeth. (disputed)
• Crowtrees Colliery near Quarrington Hill was opened in 1825 by William Hedley. (uncertain)

Deaf Hill Colliery

• Deaf Hill lies a short distance east of Trimdon Colliery and is alternatively known as Trimdon Station. Local tradition holds that the place was originally Death Hill, from a belief that children passed through the fork of a sycamore there would be cured of diphtheria; they died, and the name was changed as more people settled. (uncertain)

Derwent Colliery

• Derwent Colliery opened in 1856. (disputed)
• Derwent Colliery was opened in 1853. (disputed)
• The D Pit is recorded as opened in 1924. (disputed)
• The Charlie, D and Hunter pits are recorded as opened in 1889. (disputed)

Dipton Colliery

• The Delight Pit was sunk in 1854. (uncertain)

East Tanfield Colliery

• Ceased production in 1964. (disputed)

Edmondsley Colliery

• Durham Mining Museum dates the colliery’s opening to the 1850s; the parish council’s history puts the village’s beginnings, and the colliery’s opening, at 1840. (disputed)
• The colliery was abandoned on 30 November 1920 and the plans sent to the Mines Department; the parish council’s history gives the closure as 1921. (disputed)

Elemore Colliery

• DMM records coal dust ignited by shot firing; the inquest jury found the explosion began between the Dale Way end and the greaser but that there was not sufficient evidence to show what caused the ignition. (disputed)

Esh Winning Colliery

• The village was founded by the Pease family in the 1850s to service a new mine on the Esh Estate. (disputed)

Fishburn Colliery

• The Fishburn Coking Plant was built in 1954 alongside the colliery to produce high-grade coke for industry and a domestic coke called Sunbrite, together with by-products including town gas, which was supplied directly to the nearby Winterton Hospital and to the national grid. (uncertain)

Flushiemere Barytes Mine

• A powder house with a concrete roof stands east of Leonard's Hush at Pike Law, possibly associated with the later workings east of Flushiemere Beck. (uncertain)

Framwellgate Moor Colliery

• Framwellgate Colliery started in 1848 and was finally demolished in 1925. (disputed)

Frazer's Hush Mine

• The mine takes its name from a hush — a hydraulic prospecting technique using a breached dam to strip soil and expose bedrock — on the Greencleugh Vein, a western extension of the Red Vein, thought to date from as far back as the medieval period. (uncertain)

Greencroft Tower Colliery

• The 1840 shafts may be the Greencroft Colliery whose sinking John Bowes & Co. began on 4 March 1840. (uncertain)
• The site may be the small Greencroft Pit of the early nineteenth century, with a waggonway north-east to Annfield Plain. (uncertain)

Groverake Mine

• Groverake was worked for ironstone from 1819 before later becoming a lead, then fluorspar, mine. (uncertain)
• As a lead mine Groverake produced only about 6,498 tons of lead concentrates between 1818 and 1883. (uncertain)
• From 1983 Groverake was connected underground to Frazer's Hush mine by a 2 ft gauge battery-electric railway. (uncertain)
• Durham County Council served a building preservation notice on the winding house in 2013; the site was vandalised and stripped by scrap thieves in 2015 before the headstocks were secured by a community campaign in 2017. (uncertain)

Hamsteels Colliery

• Hamsteels Collieries and coke ovens were commenced in 1867 by R. S. Johnson and T. M. Reay and were later carried on under the title 'the owners of Hamsteels Collieries'; the museum's page dates the colliery from 1868. (disputed)

Hamsterley Colliery

• The Top Busty and Bottom Busty seams were discontinued in 1948. (disputed)
• Plans of the Bottom Busty seam at Hamsterley record its abandonment on 8 February 1968. (disputed)

Harbour House Drift

• Closed in April 1957. (uncertain)
• Closed in April 1958; the Brass Thill was abandoned in 1958. (uncertain)

Haswell Colliery

• Haswell is reputed to have been the first colliery in the world with a wire (steel) rope in its shaft. (uncertain)

Hawthorn Combined Mine

• The Hawthorn shaft is said locally to hold the European record for the most coal wound up a single shaft in one day, at 12,000 tons. (uncertain)

Healeyfield Mine

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a BGS plan titled 'Healeyfield Mine.' (catalogue SP2087, undated in the catalogue); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Hedley Colliery

• Merged with the Louisa. (uncertain)

Hedleyhill Colliery

• The colliery closed in May 1925, the Five Quarter seam being abandoned in September 1928 and the Main in January 1930. (disputed)
• The colliery had become uneconomic by the mid-20th century and was finally abandoned in 1950. (disputed)

Hedleyhope Colliery

• Hedleyhope Colliery opened in 1836 and closed in 1959. (disputed)

High Sedling Mine

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a BGS plan titled 'High Sedling Mine' (catalogue MP18748, undated in the catalogue); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Hole-in-the-Wall Colliery

• Hole-in-the-Wall Colliery opened in 1843. (disputed)

Kepier Colliery

• The colliery closed in the early 1900s. (uncertain)

Kepier Grange Colliery

• Kepier Grange Colliery was opened in 1845. (disputed)

Killhope Lead Mine

• Total output from the Killhope workings before 1818 alone is estimated to have exceeded 60,000 tonnes of lead concentrate. (uncertain)

Langley Park Colliery

• Langley Park Colliery was commenced in 1874 and brought into operation by the Consett Iron Company in 1876; in 1894 it worked the Busty and Hutton by a 30-fathom shaft and a drift, raising 200,000 tons a year, all coked, with 500 men and boys. (disputed)

Leasingthorne Colliery

• Leasingthorne Colliery was sunk in 1835. (disputed)

Lintzgarth Mine

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Lintzgarth' (catalogue OM11734, Silica And Iron Ore, dated 1930); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Littletown Colliery

• Sunk in 1834. (disputed)

Lodge Syke Mine

• The mine's two levels, Low and High, were both accessed from the Hudeshope valley and extended to connect with workings from the Eggleston valley, the Lodgesike-Manorgill vein being the primary target of exploitation. (uncertain)

Louisa Colliery

• DMM gives 22 lives lost; NMRS says nineteen were found dead and two of the five rescued died later, and names 21. (disputed)
• Gerald Moore and Francis Eric Martin, killed in 1947, are said to be the only Bevin Boys who lost their lives while working in the pits. (uncertain)

Mainsforth Colliery

• Two shafts were sunk in 1873 to 270 ft to the Five Quarter seam; the mine was abandoned by 1877 and the shafts used as a rubbish dump. The cause has been attributed both to the slack coal trade after the Franco-Prussian war and to an inundation of the pit. (uncertain)

Marshall Green Colliery

• Closed in 1936. (disputed)

Merrington Colliery

• Closed in 1882 in the trade depression. (disputed)
• First coal was brought up in 1841. (uncertain)

New Brancepeth Colliery

• Worked until 1963. (disputed)
• The eastern barytes deposit was worked from 1904 to 1921 and reopened in 1940; the western came into production in 1938. (disputed)
• A third shaft was sunk in 1872, when firebrick works were erected. (uncertain)

New Shildon Colliery

• New Shildon Drift worked from 1949 until 1985. (uncertain)

Page Bank Colliery

• DMM records a sinking begun on 14 April 1853 and an opening in 1855; the 1894 directory it reproduces says the colliery was first sunk in 1851 by a West Hartlepool company. (disputed)

Pelton Colliery

• NMRS dates the explosion that killed 24 in the Busty seam to 21 October 1866; DMM gives 31 October 1866. (disputed)

Pike Law Mine

• Only 1,725 tons of ore were raised between 1852 and 1891, when all work finally ceased. (disputed)
• The mine is listed as worked until 1925, with R. W. Raine as the last operator. (disputed)

Rookhope (Boltsburn Mine)

• The record's original source says the finest fluorite was sold to German microscope manufacturers such as Zeiss; the British Geological Survey's excursion guide says exceptionally clear crystals were exported to Austria for the manufacture of specialised lenses. (disputed)

Sacriston Colliery

• Wikipedia gives the shaft as sunk in 1838; the Durham Mining Museum gives the colliery as opening in 1839. The Findon Hill Pit was sunk from 9 August 1865. (uncertain)
• By the 1890s the pit employed 600 men and produced 1,000 tons of coal a day. (uncertain)
• On 16 November 1903 water flooded into the 3rd West district of the Busty seam, killing John Whittaker, 25, and Thomas McCormick, 52. When the workings were pumped out, Robert Richardson was found alive on the Friday standing on his coal tub after 92 hours in the dark. (uncertain)
• A fall of stone on 4 December 1940 killed five men — Joseph Welsh, George W. Scott, William Richardson, William Smith and John William Britton — while a party of officials and workmen were removing debris from a previous fall. (uncertain)
• Output was down to 1,500 tons of best-quality coal a week by 1979. The last coal was raised on 15 November 1985 and the colliery closed on 28 December; the Durham Mining Museum gives 15 November as the closing date. (uncertain)

Seaham Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum record gives the colliery as closed in 1988, having merged with Vane Tempest on 11 July 1983. (disputed)
• Wikipedia dates the Vane Tempest merger to 1988 and the closure to 1993. (disputed)

Seaton Colliery

• Seaton Colliery was sunk by the Hetton and North Hetton Coal Company. (uncertain)
• The Seaham Weekly News of 25 August 1860 carried an item on the transfer of Seaton Colliery to the Marchioness of Londonderry. (uncertain)

Shildon Colliery

• The Harvey seam was abandoned on 14 February 1927. (disputed)

Slitt Mine

• One local-history account gives 1878 as the closure date, citing competition from cheaper imported lead and a lifetime output of around 100,000 tons; this conflicts with the primary government output and employment figures showing the mine still working in 1894. (disputed)

South Hetton Colliery

• South Hetton was said to be the first colliery in Durham to draw coal in cages. (uncertain)

South Medomsley Colliery

• Opened in 1867. (disputed)

South Pelaw Colliery

• The colliery employed 353 men in 1896, peaked at 883 in 1930 and had 377 at closure in 1964. (uncertain)

South Shildon Colliery

• The colliery is recorded as closed between 1938 and 1942, perhaps reopening after. (uncertain)

St. Helen's Colliery

• Closed in 1925. (disputed)
• Workable coal was found by borings on Sir George Musgrave's estate. (disputed)

Stotsfield Burn Mine

• Stotsfield Burn was developed by the Rookhope Valley Mining Company between 1863 and 1884, with access following the customary pattern of a main shaft with an adit level; lead concentrates totalled 1,808 tons from 1863 to 1882 and 104 tons from 1932 to 1940, and fluorspar 15,168 tons from 1905 to 1940. (uncertain)

Sunniside Colliery

• The pit was reopened for a period between 1937 and 1965, with coal worked beneath the village school. (uncertain)

Tanfield Moor Colliery

• Opened in 1769, the first deep mine in the Tanfield area. (disputed)

Tin Mill Colliery

• Mindat gives 1873 as the year the colliery opened. (disputed)

Toronto Colliery

• W. C. Stobart named the colliery Toronto after the Canadian city, where he was in 1859 when coal was found under his land. (uncertain)

Trimdon Colliery

• Trimdon Colliery opened in 1840. (disputed)
• Trimdon Colliery was opened about 1844. (disputed)
• The Thornley Coal Company held the colliery in the 1850s. (uncertain)

Trimdon Grange Colliery

• A 1905 fatality report records a fall of 144 fathoms (about 263 m) down the shaft, the only located indication of the colliery's shaft depth. (uncertain)

Tudhoe Colliery

• The colliery was also known as Black Horse Colliery. (uncertain)

Tursdale Colliery

• Tursdale Colliery closed in 1968. (disputed)
• Tursdale Colliery was opened in 1854 and produced coal until 1968, employing over 800 men at its height. (uncertain)

Twizell Burn Drift

• Opened in 1843. (disputed)
• Worked from 1923. (disputed)
• Alma Drift, at the same spot, was counted with Twizell Burn in 1950 and closed in November 1958. (uncertain)

Urpeth Colliery

• Boring for coal at Urpeth began in 1742, and a new pit was sunk in 1831 by William Coulson about 700 yards north of the Engine Pit, down to the Hutton seam; the museum dates the colliery from 1835. (disputed)

Ushaw Moor Colliery

• Henry Chaytor of Witton Castle bought the colliery in 1879 and sold it to Pease and Partners after a long strike; Wikipedia puts the sale in 1883 and the Durham Mining Museum's owner list in 1893. (disputed)
• Chaytor's tenure brought a long strike, which Wikipedia's account attributes to a deliberate sacking, and he sold the colliery sick of years of industrial unrest. (uncertain)

Waterhouses Colliery

• Sunk in 1856. (disputed)

West Thornley Colliery

• Worked until 1932. (disputed)

Willington Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Willington' (catalogue D983, Hutton 'L', dated 1915); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Windlestone Colliery

• Whellan's Directory of County Durham for 1894 says the Windlestone pit was laid in 1874 and that the village had become almost deserted because Pease and Partners closed the pit that year. This cannot be reconciled with a shaft completed in 1877 or with the employment figures showing 66 men in 1883, and one of the two accounts must be wrong. (disputed)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Windlestone' (catalogue 10655, Various, dated 1931); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Wingate Grange Colliery

• Witnesses and the mining engineer Simon Tate blamed coal dust fired by a shot in the main haulage road, but the jury did not find that the shot was fired or that coal dust caused the explosion. (disputed)

Witton Park Colliery

• In the early nineteenth century the Mary Ann, Jane and George pits were owned by the Stobart family. (disputed)

Wolfcleugh Mine

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Wolfcleugh' (catalogue OM15150, Fluorspar Lead Ore, dated 1955); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain)

Wooley Colliery

• Wooley Colliery closed in 1963. (disputed)
• Wooley Colliery closed in 1951. (disputed)