Open questions: Tyne and Wear

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 79 such claims on 45 records. All regions.

Backworth Colliery

• The Tyne and Wear HER describes the Algernon Pit as opened about 1820 as a pumping shaft of the Shiremoor Coal Company, with a beam engine erected in 1875; the Durham Mining Museum dates its sinking to 1853. (disputed)
• Eccles, Backworth's last pit, was the deepest in the Northumberland coalfield at 1,440 feet, and closed in 1980 after 165 years of mining in the area. (uncertain)
• As late as 1950, 2,905 people were employed in the collieries in and immediately around Backworth. (uncertain)
• Returns from 1883 onward record fireclay raised alongside the coal, and brickmaking was carried on north of the village on the site of the former C Pit from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. (uncertain)
• In the early 1970s Backworth Colliery's railway was one of the few places in Britain where steam locomotives could still be seen at work; several have since been preserved. (uncertain)

Blackburn Fell Drift

• Closed in 1973. (disputed)

Blaydon Burn Colliery

• The Bessie Pit was closed in 1950. (disputed)

Blucher Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1800 as the year the colliery opened. (disputed)
• The mining village of Blucher was probably built when the Throckley Coal Company reopened the pit in 1900. (uncertain)

Boldon Colliery

• Other accounts state the pit was sunk by the Harton Coal Company in 1866, the winning commencing to sink to the Hutton Seam on 19 March 1866, with coal produced from 1869. The Durham Mining Museum gives the same day and month but 1869. The two cannot both be right. (disputed)

Clockburn Drift

• The two-mile drift tunnel and its railway bridge over the Derwent opened in 1948. (disputed)

Coronation Pit, Walbottle

• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1800 as the year the colliery opened. (disputed)
• The waggonway from Coronation Pit joined the branch from Duke Pit and the Throckley pits' line at Walbottle Road, all three using the inclined plane down to Lemington. (uncertain)

Coxlodge Colliery

• DMM gives 22 lives lost on 6 March 1863; the Tyne and Wear HER gives 19, and the jury's verdict names 'David Moore and eighteen others'. (disputed)

East Holywell Colliery

• A photograph caption dates East Holywell Colliery to 1828, with the Fenwick Pit sunk in 1874. (disputed)

Emma Colliery

• Whellan's 1894 directory says the Emma pit was sunk in 1843. (disputed)

Eppleton Colliery

• An explosion in the Downs pit on 28 January 1836 killed twenty, with another so badly scorched that there were faint hopes of his recovery. Over a hundred were employed in the pit at the time. (uncertain)

Felling Colliery

• The Bensham or Maudlin was worked in two sections at 76 and 88 fathoms, the Low Main at 94 fathoms and the Hutton at 101 fathoms. A Victorian account also gives the 1779 sinking to the High Main as 127 fathoms, which cannot be right for the shallowest seam; it matches the 756 ft upcast shaft instead, and is most likely the shaft depth mis-attributed. (uncertain)

Follonsby Colliery

• The colliery started sinking in 1911 to replace Wardley Colliery. (disputed)

Harraton Colliery

• Coal was first recorded as produced at Harraton Colliery in 1594. (uncertain)
• During the English Civil War, with the Tyne coal trade halted and the Port of Sunderland supplying London, Harraton Colliery came under the control of Scottish soldiers aligned to the Parliamentarian cause and was of some significance in that trade. (uncertain)
• Large-scale mining at the colliery started in 1794. The Durham Mining Museum records the colliery as working before that year. (uncertain)
• The colliery was known locally as the Cotia pit, the name coming from its Nova Scotia pit, which the area became known as because of the number of Scots who worked there. (uncertain)
• The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales for 1870-72 recorded that coal was extensively worked at Harraton but that the majority of the coal pits were exhausted. (uncertain)
• The pit closed in May 1965, with many of its miners migrating to the modern pits in Nottinghamshire. (uncertain)

Hazlerigg Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives the closing date as 25 April 1964. (disputed)
• The Tyne and Wear Historic Environment Record gives the closing date as 25 November 1964. (disputed)

Herrington Colliery

• The colliery is often called Philadelphia Colliery after the neighbouring settlement of Philadelphia, which gave its name to the Lambton Railway's locomotive works serving the Lambton collieries. (uncertain)

Houghton Colliery

• DMM gives 27 lives lost on 11 November 1850; the Houghton Heritage Society and the 1850 Spectator report it quotes give 26. (disputed)
• The inquest found the explosion caused by a naked lamp negligently used by John Watchman; DMM records the ignition as by safety lamp. (disputed)
• The Houghton Heritage Society records an explosion on 3 June 1885 that took 12 lives. (uncertain)

Jarrow Colliery

• The explosion of 17 January 1826 killed 34. (disputed)
• The explosion of 17 January 1826 killed 42. (disputed)

Lilley Drift

• The brickworks closed in 1976. (disputed)
• The brickworks remained open until 1977. (disputed)

Montagu Colliery

• A Tyne and Wear HER entry says the View Pit never reopened and a cattle market later occupied the site. (uncertain)
• A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel The Stars Look Down is said to contain a thinly disguised account of the disaster; a centenary booklet was published in 2025 by the St James Heritage and Environment Group and the Newcastle Mining Institute. (uncertain)

Mount Moor Colliery

• The last working pit, the Vale Pit, closed in 1929. (disputed)
• Pitmen were living at The Mount by 1729, probably working at Mount Moor Colliery. (uncertain)
• The original pits on Black Fell, sunk in the early 1700s, formed Mount Moor colliery; the site was later called Black Fell Colliery. (uncertain)

Newbottle Colliery

• The Tyne and Wear HER gives the colliery as opened in 1816 (the Dorothea pit), against the museum's 1774. (disputed)

North Hetton Colliery

• Sinking started on 19 April 1826. (uncertain)

Percy Main Colliery

• The colliery went to a depth of 247 metres, to the Main seam. (uncertain)

Phoenix Drift

• The Northern Mine Research Society's list dates it from 1853. (uncertain)

Redheugh Colliery

• Redheugh Colliery was sunk in 1872 and closed on 28 May 1927, the last colliery at work in Gateshead. The 1929 inspector’s report gives the sinking as 1871. (disputed)

Ryhope Colliery

• Wikipedia's account of Ryhope gives 1859 as the year the colliery opened. (disputed)

Seaton Burn Colliery

• The colliery was closed by the National Coal Board on 17 August 1965. (disputed)
• The county Historic Environment Record gives 17 August 1963 for the closure. (disputed)
• Brenkley Colliery, with an air shaft sunk on 30 September 1870, worked the Beaumont and Busty seams and closed in 1985. (disputed)
• The National Coal Board's Brenkley Colliery was based on the old Seaton Burn site and produced coal until 1986. (disputed)

Sheriff Hill Colliery

• The Historic Environment Record gives closure by 1897 and the Durham Mining Museum before 1895, the metal seam having been abandoned in 1892; Wikipedia gives 1926 under the Heworth Coal Company Ltd. (disputed)

Shipcote Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives John Bowes & Co. as owners in the 1850s; mindat gives the Marley Hill Company from 1855. (disputed)

South Garesfield Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives 1865 as the year South Garesfield Colliery opened. (disputed)
• The history of Rowlands Gill says South Garesfield Colliery near Low Friarside opened in August 1887. (disputed)

Spital Tongues Colliery

• The colliery closed in 1858 through financial difficulties. (disputed)
• The colliery closed in 1860, the tunnel having been in use for eighteen years. (disputed)

St Anthony's Colliery

• A High Pit recorded at the same grid reference may be the Restoration Pit. (uncertain)

Stargate Colliery

• Whellan's 1894 directory says the colliery was sunk in 1800 to a depth of 64 fathoms. (disputed)
• An account on the Durham Mining Museum's site says the pit lay disused for some forty years after 1833. (disputed)
• An account on the Durham Mining Museum's site says the pit was finally closed in 1961. (disputed)

Stormont Main Colliery

• The explosion of 1843 claimed twenty-eight lives, sixteen men and twelve boys. (disputed)

Team Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives the colliery as opened in 1726; the Tyne and Wear Historic Environment Record says the pit is said to have been sunk in 1824. (disputed)
• The Durham Mining Museum and the Wikipedia article on the estate both give the colliery as closing in 1973; the Tyne and Wear Historic Environment Record states that Team Colliery closed in 1941 and the site was subsequently reclaimed. (disputed)
• Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, completed in February 1998, stands on high ground at Eighton Lodge on ground cleared from this colliery. Accounts of Birtley and of the Team Colliery estate say it occupies the site of the pithead baths of the Betty Ann pit; the account of the sculpture itself says the land previously contained a colliery reservoir. The housing estate 322 metres away still carries the colliery's name. (disputed)
• An explosion at the Ravensworth Whin Pit on 10 June 1757 killed sixteen. The only account found is a single sentence in John Sykes's Local Records of 1833. (uncertain)

Throckley Colliery

• The Throckley Coal Company was formed in 1862 and included Major Stephenson, John Spencer (Newburn Steelworks), Mr Simpson and Mr Boyd; the Isabella shaft was named after the wife of the company director. (disputed)
• The Throckley Coal Company was formed in 1867 by Messrs Stephenson, firebrick manufacturers, and Messrs Spencer, Newburn steel manufacturers. (disputed)

Usworth Colliery

• The Frederick Pit opened in 1874 and the Victoria Pit in 1910; a Wellington Pit is also recorded. (disputed)
• The Frederick Pit worked from 1815 to 1914, and the Victoria and Wellington from 1845 to 1974. (disputed)

Walker Colliery

• The Tyne and Wear HER says the colliery lasted until 1918 and, in the same entry, that it closed in 1920; DMM gives 1920 and records seams abandoned in 1919 and 1920. (disputed)

Wallsend Colliery

• Co-Curate gives the colliery as active between 1778 and 1935; the Durham Mining Museum records it as opened before 1782 and leaves the closure date blank. (disputed)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Wallsend' (catalogue 3021, Tupton, dated 1893); 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)

Washington Colliery

• Five were killed on 14 June 1776. (disputed)

Wearmouth Colliery

• At least 300 men are recorded to have died at Wearmouth Colliery over its 158-year working life. (uncertain)
• Three boys were killed in a shaft fall at Wearmouth in 1837. (uncertain)

Weetslade Colliery

• The Tyne and Wear HER entry states that mining ceased in 1960, with washing and sorting of Burradon coal continuing to 1980; the DMM, Co-Curate and the 1964 and 1965 seam returns all indicate coal was worked until 1966. (disputed)

Whitburn Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives the closing date as 31 May 1968; other accounts record the final shift coming up from the shaft bottom on 8 June 1968. (disputed)

Wideopen Colliery

• The colliery was linked to the Brunton and Shields Wagonway. (disputed)
• Its coal was carried by the Fawdon Wagonway to Scotswood. (disputed)