Industrialisation Comes to Prudhoe

Photographs relating to this article, including those in this extract, may be found in Gallery 5.03

The first records of coal mining in Prudhoe, which we are able to trace, go back to 1434 when a William Forster mined in the area. Other records of the 16th century mention Thomas Bamley, Sir Ralph and William Harbottle as mine owners. During this era mines were leased by Lancelot Hedley and Reginald Heron. By 1738 Prudhoe Moor Colliery was being worked and a railway for the transport of coal from that pit was laid by John Humble, and in 1798 it is recorded that Hedley Westfell Colliery was leased by Isaac Hunter at £25 per year for a period of twenty one years.

In 1801 Whellans Directory records the population of Prudhoe as a mere 62 souls and this increased slightly over the next fifty years (Bulmer’s Directory of 1886 records Prudhoe’s population to be in the region of 400 in 1855). Most of the residents at this time lived in housing belonging to the Duke of Northumberland and were agricultural workers.

It was around 1860 that the major developments in the pits began to take place in the area with Low Prudhoe in 1861 and Hedley Park in 1881. The West Wylam pit was owned by Matthew Liddell, a staunch Roman Catholic who built Prudhoe Hall as his seat of residence. With the opening of the above mines the influx of workers caused a dramatic rise in the population. The 1871 census records it at 1995 and Bulmer’s Directory of 1886 put the population at between four and five thousand!

There were several shafts and drifts at West Wylam. The John shaft was sunk between 1836 and 1839. The William shaft was nearby. The coal from these two mines went underground to North Wylam Colliery and then on to Lemington Staithes by horse drawn wagon. The New Pit was sunk in 1890 and was worked until 1932 when it closed due to flooding problems. In 1951 a submerged pump was installed in the old shaft which drained the workings, and allowed them to be operated again.

West Wylam New Pit (1890 to 1932)
Screens in background. Haulage building became a garage

The two main drifts, which were directly south of the large screening plant, were opened about 1869. The Level drift had a double track of tub lines which brought coal from Hedley Park Colliery via the Durham Riding Colliery.

In 1935, Mr Humble, who owned the land used by the Mickley Coal Company, demanded more royalties for the coal brought from Hedley Park Colliery to the Mickley screens. The Company refused to pay the suggested increases and decided to lay a tub-way from Hedley Park Colliery to Durham Riding. The coal then went down a shaft from where it was taken to the screening plant at West Wylam. This change resulted in the closure of Mickley screens!

The Dip drift, which was adjacent to the Level drift, had a single tub-way which led to all the main seams in West Wylam Colliery. There was another shaft to the north of the screening plant which may well have been an upcast shaft for either the John Pit, or the William Pit.

During the early days of the mine at West Wylam, coal was won by using the old ‘bord and pillar’ method of extraction. This involved driving main roadways in through the coal and working it in vertical tunnels in an opposite direction to the main roads. The working area looked like a chess board with pillars of coal left in to support the roof and separating each stall from its neighbour. The coal was cut away at the base of the seam by hand pick, blasted down, then hand-filled into tubs and taken ‘to bank’.

In later years the colliery became mechanised; long-wall faces were developed, coal cutters were introduced and productivity increased. Cutters were used in every seam. The coal was cut using Huwood’s cutters, blasted down and either hand-filled onto the face conveyor, or dragged by a scraper and dropped into tubs, then taken ‘to bank’. The Victoria seam, a very low twelve-inch seam, was worked with a Huwood cutter!

When the coal came to the surface it passed through a large screening plant where stone slag was removed. Some of the coal was washed at the nearby ‘washery’. This was a busy place, washing coal from all the Company’s collieries and, in later times, coal from the Chopwell, Greenside and Emma collieries was washed here. The waste from the screens was taken away by an ‘aerial-flight’ and dropped onto large heaps at some distance from the screens.

At the beginning of the century household coal would be delivered by horse and cart. Later, a ‘rolley-way’ was laid between the colliery and a hopper – which stood where the West Wylam Clinic was later situated. The wagon tipped the coal into the hopper and from there it was led away by horse and cart, later by lorry, to the homes of the workmen. Part of the cutting for the rolley-way can still be seen. Coal which was to be used for industrial purposes was moved by railway to the main Newcastle to Carlisle line via ‘the points’ at Hagg Bank.

The colliery steadily grew in importance as a production unit, and as an employer. In 1914 a By-Products plant was built — by German workers, just prior to the outbreak of World War One. Among the things produced was gas — used to fire the ovens in the Carbonisation Plant. The main products were benzene, toluene and ziolene, together with the lubricating oil Olivine and heavy oils and tar. The Mickley Coal Company closed the plant in 1934.

Close to the By-Products plant was a laboratory. This had the task of testing the mine-air, every twenty eight days, from all the collieries belonging to the Mickley Coal Company. After nationalisation this laboratory became ‘C Group Laboratory’ for No 1 Area, N&C Division of the National Coal Board. The laboratory also checked conditions of the wash-boxes at the ‘washery’ and the effluents from the ponds.

The West Wylam pit was the biggest colliery in the area, employing 1 022 men in 1898 and maintaining over 900 employees up to the beginning of the Second World War, continuing in production until 1960. The village of West Wylam grew up around the pit (as did the community at Low Prudhoe). At West Wylam there were in the region of 280 dwellings and two chapels. The village was also known as Stancely after the woodland which formerly covered the area. The plan of John Ord’s estate of 1871 marks Stancely Bank, Stancely Little Wood and Stancely Bog in addition to
Stancely Wood. In later maps the spelling is changed to ‘Stanley’.

West Wylam pit, as were the others in the area, was a drift seam, but shafts were sunk prior to 1930 to act as pumping shafts which were necessary to regulate the water coming from the old Clara Vale workings. Because of their nature there were no explosive gasses in the pits so smoking was allowed and candles and midge lamps could be used. Strong draughts, however, meant that the candles had to be held horizontally in order to achieve a flame. Much of the coal was used in coke production. Good quality ‘seggar’ clay was also extracted. Consequently, coke ovens and brick yards grew up beside the pits.

Mickley Coal Company had built a firebrick works at the colliery in 1870 and it continued to flourish. In 1927 eighteen people were employed in the brickyard. There was a Schofield brick press which produced 45,000 common bricks per week. The bricks were burned in a twenty-chamber Belgian kiln, which was enlarged in the 1930’s when another eight chambers were added. The brickyard also had six old Newcastle kilns, each capable of holding 12,500 bricks, which were used when the required output could not be met by Schofield. Most of the clay used for the bricks came from the drifts at West Wylam but later on, clay was obtained from Hedley Park Drift and from the opencast site at Horsley. Facing bricks were sold to local builders. By 1960 the output of the brickyard was 75,000 per week! The brickworks continued operating well into the 1970’s, outliving the life of the colliery.

The seams worked at West Wylam were the Towneley (4ft 6ins high), the Tilley (2ft 6ins), The Five Quarter (3ft 6ins), the Six Quarter (3ft), the Yard or Three Quarter seam (3ft), the Brockewell (2ft 6ins), and the Victoria (1ft 3ins). The Towneley and the Tilley seams were worked extensively from 1940 onwards and the Victoria from 1955 until the colliery’s closure in 1960. Conditions in the Victoria seam, being only 1ft 3ins high, were particularly difficult due to the cramped conditions. One miner joked “If you went in with your shovel turned the wrong way over you had to crawl back out again because there wasn’t enough room to turn it over!” It was also necessary to walk through water to get to the workings.

Conditions at West Wylam, though, were much better than at Hedley. One miner explained that “it was a palace compared with Hedley since in most of the West Wylam seams caunch (stone) was taken out when working the seam so as to provide a little more headroom.” When working the seams a barrier had to be left when workings arrived at a spot below any important building to prevent subsidence. For example, a hundred yards had to be left under Prudhoe Castle or any church and forty yards had to be left below a farm.

When working the Dip Drift Towneley, evidence came to light that in pre-historic times the course of the Tyne at Prudhoe must have altered. The mines’ inspectorate imposed certain conditions to prevent flooding, so exploratory boring took place forty feet above and forty feet ahead of the workings. The presence of alluvium (fine grained fertile soil consisting of mud, silt and sand deposited by flowing water) would indicate the position of a river bed and consequently the working had to stop immediately because of the danger of ingress of water from the river. When carrying out this process from West Wylam, alluvium was met several yards before the current river position indicating that the previous course of the Tyne was several yards south of its present position.

Since drift mines are relatively easily accessible there are several records of unusual wildlife being found in the pit. A record of the 1750’s tells of the Braes of Derwent hounds chasing a fox into a mine at Prudhoe. In more recent times, on October 4th 1934, Jack Tate was working down West Wylam Colliery, about 1 ¼ miles in from the river, when he saw two bright lights coming towards him. Thinking it was a large rat he sat and watched it approaching him, then picked up a large piece of wood and hit the creature, killing it. On closer examination, however, he discovered that he had, in fact, killed an otter. He placed it in a tub and brought it to bank much to the surprise of his ‘marras’. The otter was measured and was 3ft 5ins long. It was then taken to Mr Sidney Bates at ‘The Grange’ for his examination.

The pit ponies at West Wylam pit pulled a load of twelve tubs. The ponies were very intelligent and it is said that, should an extra tub be attached, the ponies would be able to tell that the load was made up of thirteen tubs and would refuse to move.

Coal from neighbouring collieries was sent to the screens at West Wylam. The Hedley coal from the Low Mains Drifts, the Hutton Drift and the Hedley Road Five Quarter and Six Quarter was taken by wagon, but, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, that from Hedley Park Colliery and the Fell Drift was taken along the surface tramway via Hyons Wood, where it was sent down the Durham Riding Shaft and thence, almost a mile and three quarters underground to West Wylam where it was screened and washed. (It is strange to think that coal would be brought out of the pit, transported overground and then back underground before reaching the screens).

Before the time of fixed wages, collieries had a ‘cavil agreement book’. Some seams were easier to work than others, some being particularly low and others wet. It was only fair that everyone had an equal chance of working in a good ‘cavil’, so every quarter lots were drawn to determine in which part of the mine a hewer would be working. Teams of workmen (‘marras’) were formed and this was part and parcel of the “cavilling system”. The teams were paid according to the “weight of mineral gotten”. A good ‘cavil’ provided you with good pay and the day when the ‘cavils’ were drawn was known as ‘cavilling day’. Some miners had lucky charms or carried out a particular ritual of their own in order to bring them good luck when the ‘cavils’ were drawn. The miner’s wife would look anxiously for the expression on her husband’s face when he came home to see whether he had drawn a good or a bad ‘cavil’. Miners’ wages at this time were very complex and were set out in the ‘cavil agreement book’. According to the West Wylam’s book for 1901 a thirteen year old boy earned 1s 3 1/2d a day on the screens (sorting the coal) while a youth aged 19 received 2s 10d. The wages of the hewers (who cut and loaded the coal) and the putters (who moved the tubs) varied according to the amount of coal they won.

In the latter years, prior to nationalisation, the West Wylam colliery was managed by Sidney Bates, a bachelor who lived at The Grange on South Road. He was also a director of the Consett Iron Company. Quite regularly Mr Bates would telephone the colliery and request that one of the lads be sent to buy his morning paper and bring it up to The Grange. Often he would get the lad to stay and have a game of billiards with him. Mr Bates, when he died in the early 1950’s, left a quarter of a million pounds in his will. The last manager of the colliery was Mr Cowell and the manager of the screens was Mr Chapman.

Conditions were hard for miners and their wives, especially during the times of strikes when supplies of food and coal ran short. During the 1926 strike, for example, many of the striking miners would make for the area below where Bewick Grange Estate now lies. A row of ten miners’ cottages stood there at the time. Here they would dig down for coal which could be found just below the surface, then bag it for their own use or sell it, even though it was of poor quality and would scarcely burn. This slatey coal was known as “Edgewell Blue”. A local songwriter of the time (probably Alby Gibbon) wrote a song entitled “The Edgewell Blues” in which he describes these hardships.

A Prudhoe poet, Ned Scorer, in his poem “West Wylam Pit”, writes:

“I would like to talk of days gone by
We were all young then
We worked down West Wylam Pit
It sorted lads from men.
The work was hard and dirty,
And sometimes pretty wet
And the walk in-bye was awful
If you missed the set……
The pit’s gone and is a memory
The shaft chair’s towed away
And if ye gan to look for them
here’s nee sign there today
Now the work maybe got them dirty
And sometimes really wet,
But it bred the best of working men
The world has ever met.”

With the decline of mining in the area in the 1930’s, hard times fell on Prudhoe. In her book “Prudhoe in Old Postcards” (pub 1985) the late Margaret Daglish, a former Prudhoe librarian, informs us that “the town of Battle, near Hastings in Sussex, adopted Prudhoe and used to send clothing and leather for men to repair shoes.” “Huts”, she says, “were set up for this purpose on land, which is now Hillcrest”. She goes on to remark that not many people can remember this, not even the Clerk of Battle, because their records only go back to 1934, but Margaret declares that she remembers this gesture with pride.

Pride in, and nostalgia for, Prudhoe are illustrated in the following dialect poem entitled ‘The Prudda Lads’.

A’ve wandered far and wide
Aal around the countryside,
An’ mennys the time A’ve waaked doon Stanley Born,
Wat a grand site yu cud see
Lookin ower fra Hor-sel-ee,
At thu place wheir thu Prudda lads were born.
Aa remember when Aa wes a wee bit laddie
Playin in thu fields amang the corn,
Tek thu gud times wi thu baad,
Thu best A’ve ivver haad,
Wes at thu place wheir thu Prudda lads were born.
Theor’s an aad stane hoose wants retiling
Thu waals aroond the hoose are badly worn,
But the roses up thu waal,
Aa think Aa see them aal,
At thu place wheir thu Prudda lads were born.
The reesin why Aa left
Aa was wun day blamed for theft,
Aa went away and vowed Aa nivver wud retorn,
Noo Aa’d give a hundred pund
Just tu stand on thet same grund,
At thu place wheir thu Prudda lads were born.

In the 1950’s many of the smaller pits in the old ‘C Group’ were closed. By 1960 only West Wylam (including Hedley) and Bardon Mill were still working. On 26th May 1961 West Wylam Colliery was closed, due mainly to dwindling coal reserves. The last coal up amounted to 296 tons and 2 cwt.

During its life the colliery, and its auxiliary units, had provided secure employment for many men who lived in West Wylam and Prudhoe. With the closure, many of the miners left the industry altogether and some took early retirement. Others stayed within the industry, being transferred to larger pits and resulting in a much longer time spent travelling to and from work. Mining had come to an end in West Wylam after 125 years.