Whitburn Colliery was a coal mine located about three miles south of South Shields,

North East England North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. The region has three current administrative levels below the region level in the region; combined authority, unitary authorit ...

, located on the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

coast.

Background

Marsden was originally a small village, consisting of farms, a few cottages and a

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses mar ...

Souter Point Souter Lighthouse is a lighthouse located in the village of Whitburn, Tyne and Wear, England. (It was generally known as Souter Point Lighthouse when in service). Souter Point was the first lighthouse in the world to be actually designed and b ...

. Local industry consisted of a small

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

quarry.

Development

In the 1870s, the Whitburn Coal Company bought the five quarries, two of which were developed as the Lighthouse (Marsden) Quarries. On 14 July 1874 the company began sinking the Whitburn winnings, a bore-hole put down below the Brockwell Seam. However, the company failed to find any coal, and was faced with large amounts of water ingress from the North Sea. In 1877, a new shaft was developed using the Kind-Chaudron process, its first deployment in the UK coal industry. The section through the water-fissured strata is lined with iron tubing, although throughout its life the electric pumps were required to extract per day. Both shafts had a diameter of , with No.1 shaft having a depth of , and No.2 with a depth of , to enable access to the Bensham seam, with thicknesses between to .

Marsden village

The industrial development of the area required additional workers. The company built a new Marsden village, located between the Lighthouse Quarries and Whitburn Colliery. Designed to house 700+ people, there were: 135 houses; nine streets; a church and a

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chapel; co-op store;

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

; school; and a

Miners Institute A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...

. Located directly on the cliff top, resulting in an exposed and often weather-beaten experience, many wives refused to move to the village, meaning that most miners lived in

South Shields South Shields () is a coastal town in South Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England. It is on the south bank of the mouth of the River Tyne. Historically, it was known in Roman times as Arbeia, and as Caer Urfa by Early Middle Ages. According to the 20 ...

and commuted daily using the newly constructed railway.

Operation

The company built the twin-track

South Shields, Marsden, and Whitburn Colliery Railway The South Shields, Marsden, and Whitburn Colliery Railway was a Whitburn Coal Company built twin track branch railway line that ran along the North Sea coast in County Durham, England, from in South Shields to Whitburn Colliery at Marsden via ...

, leaving the North Eastern Railway line at ,

and travelling to Marsden via two intermediate stations. Built to serve the colliery and opened in May 1879, the line served the Lighthouse limestone quarry, a paper manufactory, and local farms. On 19 March 1888 the line opened to the public. The railway allowed colliery output to quickly rise to , employing 1,600 workers. Coal from the colliery initially fueled the

lime kiln A lime kiln is a kiln used for the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate) to produce the form of lime (material), lime called quicklime (calcium oxide). The chemical equation for this chemical reaction, reaction is :Calcium carbonate, Ca ...

s, which closed at the same time as the mines. In 1891, the Whitburn Coal Company was bought by the

Harton Coal Company Harton may refer to: *Harton, North Yorkshire, a village and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England * Harton, Shropshire, a hamlet in the parish of Eaton-under-Heywood, Shropshire, England *Harton, South Shields, a settlement in South Tyneside, Ty ...

, and by 1921 the system employed over 3,500 men. The company shut

Marsden railway station Marsden railway station serves the village of Marsden near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England. The station is on the Huddersfield Line, operated by Northern and is about west of Huddersfield station. It was opened in 1849 by the Lond ...

in 1926, due to a lack of traffic and its proximity to the alternate station located within the colliery. On 16 May 1934 the developed Five Quarter seam was abandoned. By the time of nationalisation in 1945 into the National Coal Board, the site employed just under 1,500 miners. The railway line itself became the first nationalised passenger line on 1 January 1947. The service for miners was replaced by bus from 16 November 1953, but public trains remained running until withdrawn with effect from Monday 23 November.

Closure

Due to higher levels of water ingress as the mine shafts were developed under the North Sea, and resultant higher costs of operation and coal extraction, it was decided to close the mine in the mid-1960s. The final shift came up from shaft bottom on 8 June 1968. With the closure of the mine, it was decided to demolish the village, due to

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms. The landward ...

and the economic need to heavily invest in the village to bring it up to modern living and sanitation standards. What remains are five rows of

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terraced house In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...

s, the small

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

and a

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, although this is technically now located in Whitburn. Parts of the northern section of the railway line (South Shields) survived the colliery's closure but it also closed and lifted in 1993 with the closure of Westoe Colliery.

References

External links

* http://www.marsdenbannergroup.btck.co.uk
Whitburn Colliery @ the Durham National Mining museum
{{Coord, 54.978, -1.3766, display=title South Shields Coal mines in Tyne and Wear History of Tyne and Wear