Open questions: Northumberland

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 68 such claims on 43 records. All regions.

Acomb Colliery

• The museum's returns show a peak of 316 employed in 1940. (disputed)
• The memorial plaque says the colliery employed 290 men at its peak. (disputed)
• The plaque says the colliery produced over 70,000 tons of coal a year. (uncertain)

Ashington Colliery

• The first shaft was sunk in 1866. (disputed)
• The colliery closed in March 1988. (disputed)
• The colliery closed in October 1986. (disputed)

Bates Colliery

• The colliery employed 2,000 men at its height, reduced to 1,700, then 1,400, and by agreement with the NCB to about 880 by early 1986. In May 1985 it was described in the Commons as employing over 1,700 men. (disputed)

Bebside Colliery

• Bebside was formerly a mining village west of Blyth, a township in Horton parish and from 1866 a civil parish of its own until it was absorbed into Blyth in 1920. Its mine operated between 1858 and 1926, and it was served by Bebside railway station from 1850 to 1964. (uncertain)

Bedlington 'D' Colliery

• Northumberland County Council's page for Doctor Pit Park dates the sinking of the pit to the 1860s. (disputed)

Blackett Colliery

• Abandoned in March 1927. (disputed)
• Closed in July 1927. (disputed)

Blackett Level

• The list entry dates the portal to 1854; the Blackett family history says construction began in 1855. (disputed)

Broomhill Colliery

• Broomhill's north-eastern workings were reached by the East Togston, Dawsons and Coldrife surface drifts, and its Prince and Albert seams by the Moorhouse drift. (uncertain)
• The north side of the colliery finished in 1959 and the south side in 1961. (uncertain)

Carshield Mine

• By 1880 the lead deposit was regarded as exhausted, but in 1899 the Vieille Montagne Zinc Co reopened the workings to mine for zinc ore and mining continued until 1913. (disputed)
• The 1914 List of Mines records Carshield at West Allendale under the Vieille Montagne Zinc Co. of Nenthead, working lead ore and zinc ore, with 88 employed underground and 2 at surface. (disputed)

Church Burn Mine

• The 1884 plan depicts only the first 140 m of the East Vein level, suggesting it was impassable beyond that point by then, and it seems probable the mine lay unworked between 1854 and 1884, though the extent or date of any exploration in those years is unknown. (uncertain)

Coanwood Colliery

• Coal was worked at Coanwood by 1792, possibly under a lease to the London Lead Company for Whitfield smelt mill. (uncertain)

Cowpen Colliery

• Coal was first deep mined at Cowpen in 1793 by a partnership of speculators that became the Cowpen Coal Company. (disputed)

Fallowfield Mine

• The mine was probably worked in Roman times — it lies very near the line of Hadrian's Wall — and is thought to have been worked in the Middle Ages by the monks of Hexham Abbey, who used the lead to roof the abbey. (uncertain)

Fourstones Colliery

• The colliery opened in 1855 and closed in 1925; a Benson owned it in 1860-65, William Benson from 1870 to 1910 and William Benson and Son Ltd from 1915 to 1925. (disputed)

Gloria Colliery, Hartley

• The museum records 304 employed in 1950, the last return before closure. (disputed)
• The site plaque says two hundred men were working there at closure, working out a small reserve. (disputed)

Gunnerton Quarry

• As dressed stone it is described by the Survey as a medium hard, fine grained, creamy white sandstone of the Middle Limestone Group, and by its present supplier as medium grained and creamy white with dark bed markings and occasional buff tones — both finer than the coarse-grained bed of the quarry face. (disputed)

Hauxley Colliery

• Water from the old Hauxley workings, and from the opencast that followed in the 1970s, is pumped to the sea through an iron-stained concrete outfall on the shore, the pumping station standing in a compound about 300 metres inland. (uncertain)

Isabella Colliery, Blyth

• The colliery first opened around 1850 and was worked until 1966. (disputed)
• At its peak the colliery employed 917 men and boys. (disputed)

Langley Barony Mine

• Thomas Bewick obtained a lease of the minerals in Langley Barony in 1868 and was later joined by local businessmen to form Bewick and Partners; output rose from 30 tons in 1873 to 4,760 tons by 1882, then declined to 230 tons by 1893 when the mine closed. (uncertain)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Langley Barony' (catalogue OM15348, Lead Ores, dated 1943); 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)

Linton Colliery

• Output and employment are first recorded for 1896, when 182 people were employed, 120 of them below ground, raising steam coal. (disputed)
• The colliery began production in 1911. (disputed)

Longhirst Colliery

• Wikipedia gives the working life of Longhirst Colliery as 1868 to 1896. (disputed)
• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1934 as the closure date of Longhirst Colliery. (disputed)

Longhirst Drift

• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1956 as the year the drift opened, after driving from 1954. (disputed)
• The Northern Mine Research Society's list of NCB collieries dates the drift from March 1955. (disputed)

Longhoughton Quarry

• A lease of 1896 between the Duke of Northumberland's Alnwick Castle Estate and H. G. Prowde Ltd covered the 'Longhoughton Whinstone and Limestone Quarry', with a further lease to the same company in 1919, while the Northumberland Whinstone Company is recorded working here from 1887. The source states that matters are not completely clear and suggests the Prowde leases may refer to a new quarry opened east of the original. (disputed)

Lynemouth Colliery

• Wikipedia records 1,734 people employed in 1960. The split it gives — 1,390 above ground and 344 below — is implausible for a working colliery and is not repeated here as fact. (uncertain)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Lynemouth Colliery' (catalogue 17948, Ellington Combine, dated 2005); 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)

Mill Pit, Blyth

• The Cowpen and North Seaton company was taken over by the Mickley Coal Company in 1923. (disputed)
• The colliery achieved a peak output of 366,000 tons of coal. (disputed)
• The pit closed in 1968. (disputed)

Nelson Colliery

• In production from January 1935. (uncertain)

Newburgh Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1892 as the year the colliery opened, under the Radcliffe Coal Company Limited. (disputed)
• A shaft was sunk in 1900 about a mile from the original pit at Radcliffe and named Newburgh. (disputed)

Newsham Colliery

• The Low Main seam was abandoned in 1926. (disputed)
• The Low Main was worked at the Hannah Pit until 1877, after which the shaft was used for ventilation. (disputed)

Plashetts Colliery

• The colliery finally closed in 1962. (disputed)
• The Plashetts seam was abandoned on 1 June 1935; the colliery was still listed, with five men, in 1964. (disputed)

Plenmeller Colliery

• The Plenmeller opencast mine was opened on 19 September 1991 and by May 2002 had extracted 1.91 million tonnes. (disputed)
• Opencast extraction took place at Plenmeller, but coaling ceased in 1998. (disputed)

Radcliffe Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1836 for the start of sinking and September 1837 for first coal. (disputed)
• The Durham Mining Museum records the colliery as closing on 10 August 1896, with the main seams abandoned as exhausted. (disputed)
• The colliery closed in 1892 after a fault in the seam, then fire and flooding, made coal extraction uneconomical. (disputed)

Seaton Delaval Colliery

• The folk song 'Blackleg Miner' names the village directly — 'Oh, Delaval is a terrible place' — alongside the neighbouring Seghill pit. (uncertain)

Shankhouse Colliery

• The Amelia Pit, also known as Shankhouse, worked from 1847 to 1940. (disputed)

Shilbottle Colliery

• Accounts differ: the Durham Mining Museum gives 1982, Wikipedia 1981. Both agree the workforce transferred to Whittle. (disputed)

Shildon Lead Mine

• The North Pennines geopark says an enormous steam engine was installed in the 1840s in a final attempt to keep the mines dry; Historic England says the pumping engine was removed between 1840 and 1850. (disputed)

Shotton Surface Mine

• The Wikipedia article dates the permission to 2007; the councillor's report says operations commenced in 2008. (disputed)
• The Wikipedia article says the site employed around 150 people at its height in 2014; the councillor's report of September 2019, during the final phase, gives 117. (disputed)

South Tyne Colliery

• The South Tyne Colliery opened a pit at the later works site in 1906. (disputed)

St Peter's Mine

• Geograph's 2008 record of the site states the mine worked for lead from about 1922 to 1946. (disputed)
• The Buddlepit database gives the mine as worked until 1943, with the Weardale Lead Co. Ltd holding it from 1923 to 1945 - three years of company tenure after work is said to have stopped. (disputed)

Stonecroft and Greyside Mine

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Stonecroft And Greyside' (catalogue OM3750, Lead Ore, dated 1897); 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)

Swinhope Mine

• The Mine Explorer Society dates the first Beaumont development to 1809-1814; Allen Valleys Local History gives Beaumont ownership in 1815. (disputed)

Togston Colliery

• The Togston pit opened a few years after Radcliffe Colliery gave out in 1892, with a line connecting it to the Radcliffe Colliery railway. (disputed)

Tynedale Colliery

• Tynedale Colliery had no rail connection and relied on road transport. (disputed)
• The Acomb Coal Co.'s 1919 registration notes describe its collieries as connected with the L. & N.E. Railway. (disputed)

Woodhorn Colliery

• Around two thousand people worked at Woodhorn, in a hierarchy of hewers, putters and trappers. (uncertain)