WALLSEND. Gateshead, Northumberland. 1767.
The colliery was sunk about 1780 with great difficulty and expense with the technology that was then available and the owners, the Russell family, were on the point of abandoning the project but they persevered and it was to prove the main source of the family fortune. The High Main Seam was found throughout the property and was nearly six feet thick and was regarded as one of the finest of the Newcastle coals and was, for some time called “Russell’s Wallsend.”
There were several Pits. The Church Pit was near the parish church with a railway line which carried waggons of coal down an incline “by the hand of a single individual.” A railway from another colliery crossed this line on a wooden bridge.
The shaft frame that supported the pulleys was made of wood and on the wheels were ropes that lowered men and materials. There was tall brick funnel on top of the upcast shaft and a railed platform near the top to facilitate repairs. There was an engine house which contained the machinery for working the ropes and close to it were the boilers which raised the steam which powered the pit.
Close by was the “C” Pit at which “was seen a practical display of that fearful agent which has so often hurled the miner into the presence of his Maker.” There was four-inch metal pipe by which firedamp was conducted from the bottom of the pit and burned off at the top of the pipe. The gas came from small fissures in the coal and chinks in the roof. It was recorded that they excite little apprehension among the pitmen who had been known to collect the gas in clay bottles and burn them at home by making a small hole in the clay.
Commenting on the frequency of explosions in the area the Newcastle Journal of 21st. March 1767 made the following observations:
As so many deplorable accidents had lately happened in collieries, it certainly claims the attention of coal owners to make a provision for the distressed widows and fatherless children occasioned by these mines, as the catastrophe from foul air becomes more common than ever yet, as we have been requested to take no particular notice of these things, which, in fact, could have very little good tendency, we drop a further mentioning of it but before we dismiss the subject, as a laudable example of their innovation, we recommended the provision made in the Trinity House for distressed, seamen, seamen’s widows, etc., which in every respect, is praiseworthy and confers honour on that brotherhood.
Information supplied by Ian Winstanley and the Coal Mining History Resource Centre.
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