Old Images of Wallsend

Historic Book

Extract from “All the Year Round · A Weekly Journal · Volume 9.”

Published 1873

WALLSEND COALS .
It is of no use to advise the public
” When you ask for Wallsend conls see
that you get them . ” The truth is that ,
literally speaking , there are no Wallsend
coals , and therefore it is an impossibility to
get them . A search for those collieries ,
the produce of which figures at the head
of every coal – merchant’s price list , results
in the discovery of a large scattered ci
devant pit village , or rather series of pit
villages , about midway between Newcastle
on – Tyne and North Shields . This village
of Wallsend , deriving its name from being
located at the termination of the great
Roman wall which stretched from the
Tyne to the Solway Firth , stands on a
broad level table – land above the steep
northern bank of the Tyne . It is sur
rounded with mouldy and weed – grown pit
heaps of coal dross and waste , the relics of
a time when coal – winning was an active
industry at Wallsend . You ask for the
collieries , and a venerable man , in whom
the memories of the past are not wholly
dead , undertakes to be your cicerone among
the gaunt crumbling skeletons of disused
engine – houses and mouldering timbers .
This silent and solitary rain was the once

famons Russell’s Wallsend Main , that the
Old Wallsend pit ; this other , hoarier and
more dilapidated than its fellows , was the
New Wallsend Colliery . For the last twenty
years at least the Wallsend collieries have
not yielded an ounce of coal . As we pick
our way among the field patches and over
the crumbling relies of waggon – ways , it is
a strange feeling to realise that far below
in the bowels of the earth there ramify the
multifarious workings of a lapsed industry .
The pits and workings are full of water ,
” drowned , ” in mining parlance ; and the
coal – hewers of Wallsend have either emi
grated , or are engaged in some of the new
industries that have sprung into lusty
vitality on the banks of the Tyne .

Before steam power was used , and while
as yet there was no thought of a sale for
any other kind of coal than household
coal , were the palmy days of Wallsend ,
and the colliery system of which it was
the grand centre . From Blaydon on the
Tyne , west of Newcastle , to Cullercoats , on
the eastern coast of Northumberland , there .
extends a section of the famous Ninety
Fathom Dyke . This barrier divides the
steam coal from the household coal , the
latter lying in the comparatively small
triangle , shorn off by the Ninety Fathom
Dyke from the rest of the county . This
triangle – the Wallsend area , as it may be
called – was the birthplace and nursery of
Northumbrian coal mining , and its sole
output was household coal . The mines
belonged to the great territorial mag
nates , the ” grand allies , ” as they were
called – Lords Ravensworth , Strathmore ,
and Wharncliffe , the Russells of Brance
peth , Matthew Bell , the Brandlings , and
others . It is recorded that coal was first
won in Wallsend Colliery in 1781 , but
there were workings in the district very
long before that date ; for when the adja
cent . Heaton Colliery was inundated in
1815 , the covered up mouths of old for
gotten shafts , on which tall trees were
growing , fell in from the withdrawal of
the support of the water below . The chief
collieries of the system , besides the Wails
end pits themselves , were Percy Main ,
Heaton , Killingworth , Howdon , Walker ,
Westmoor , Gosforth , Bigg’s Main , & c . The
” grand allies ” were the despots of the
northern coal trade in those days ; But
there was no want of geniality in their
despotism , and there would be a keen
competition now for cards to such a ball
as was held at Gosforth when coal was .
first won there in 1829. The ball – room
-a spacious , lofty , and brilliantly lit apart

The
ment – was eleven hundred feet below
ground , the naked face of the coal seam
forming a portion of its panelling .
company , which numbered three hundred ,
of whom half were ladies , began to
” arrive and descend ” at half – past nine in
the morning , and dancing lasted till after
three in the afternoon . The viewers and
managers of Wallsend were the Buddles ,
father and son , both men of great ad
ministrative ability , and the latter so skilful
and ‘ originative as a mining engineer as
to have merited the title of the George
Stephenson of colliery work . From 1811
the viewer and manager of Killingworth
was Nicholas Wood , the friend and ally of
Stephenson , and in later life the greatest
authority in the kingdom on every branch
of practical and scientific mine engineer
ing , and the first president of the North of
England Institute of Mining Engineers .

The subjects of the ” grand allies , ” ruled
over vicariously by the Buddles and
Nicholas Wood , were a race of many
virtues and many faults , for some of which
latter they could hardly be reckoned re
sponsible . They were for the most part
absolutely uneducated , for there was little
time for schooling when boys went into
the pit before they were six years old .
They drank very hard , fought not a little ,
and thought nothing , when their blood was
up , of breaking out into open insurrection
against their lords and masters the ” grand
allies , ” and smashing or burning the be
longings of an obnoxious pit . In the early
days the pitman bound himself for a year
at a spell , and since he was a scarce com
modity he got an annual bounty in name
of ” binding money . ” In 1804 this bounty
was as high as twenty guineas per man ;
in 1809 it had fallen to five guineas , and
ere long it disappeared altogether , the pit
men preferring to agitate against the
system of yearly bindings , for which fort
nightly engagements have for some time
been substituted . Before 1826 , when the
laws against illegal combinations were
modified , strikes were dangerous things ,
dealt with as they were by the strong hand
of the military operating at the bidding of
the masters . But the pitmen were stub
born fellows , and made a good fight
for what they thought their rights , spite
of the terror of the ” sodgers . ” In 1809
there was a general uprising on the ques
tion of the bindings . The recalcitrant
pitmen were hunted down by owners ,
magistrates , and military , and every jail
in the district was so crammed with them
that three hundred had to be cooped in the

stables and stable – yard of the Bishop of
Durham . Even in this strait they would
not yield , and the grand principle of arbi
tration thus early was vindicated , a soldier
and a clergyman acting as mediators . The
local annals are full of records of strikes ,
mass meetings , riots , and destruction of
property on the part of the pitmen , and
the pages are sprinkled with their blood .
The blood indeed was not all on one side ;
for so late as 1832 a magistrate was killed
by the pitmen , for which crime one of the
perpetrators was gibbeted on the ground .
where now stands the Tyne Dock .

Coal – miners in those days literally took
their lives in their hands when they went
down into the pit . In the collieries of the
Wallsend system , there constantly loomed .
the double danger of fire and water . The
seams of the household coal were excep
tionally fiery and generative of explosive .
gases ; and no man knew but that his
next blast might let in an inundation .

The explosion record is especially ghastly .
In 1803 , thirteen miners were killed at
Wallsend ; in 1806 , ten ; and in 1809 ,
twelve ; at Killingworth , in 1814 , twenty
four ; at Percy Main , in 1818 , four ; and
in 1821 , fifty – two at Wallsend ; in 1835 ,
one hundred and one , and the year after ,
eleven in that most deadly colliery . Not
even the tragic story of the Hartley catas
trophe is more pitiful than the record of
the terrible inundation of Heaton Colliery
in May , 1815. As if a subterranean lake
had burst into the workings , the water in
a twinkling rose in the shafts to a height
of nineteen fathoms , and soon increased to
thirty – three , spite of all the pumping power
that could be brought to bear . There were
in the pit at the time of the influx seventy
five persons : forty – one men , and thirty – four
boys : not one of whom escaped from the
living grave . It was indeed not till January
of the following year that the first body
was recovered ; and not until the end of
February could be formed the long piteous
procession to the trenches dug in the
corner of Wallsend churchyard . On the
gauze of a safety – lamp gripped in the hand
of a dead lad , they found these words rudely
written : ” Love your mother , Johnnie ; we
prayed while we had time . ” That dreary
Wallsend churchyard , with its dingy green
grave mounds , as I saw them the other
day , half hidden by grimy snow , how it
teems with terrible associations to the
That ridge student of colliery history !
tells of the dead in the explosion of 1821 ;
around this once stood a very sorrowful
company of widows and orphans , when on

that summer forenoon of 1836 , the five
score victims of the explosion of the 18th
of June , having been taken dead from
under the earth , were put under it again
in the consecrated ground . Those were
times when ” a coroner’s inquest at the
collieries was a judicial mockery , ” and when
the stereotyped direction to the jury was
” that this was one of those lamentable ac
cidents which were so common to coal pits ,
and which no human foresight could
prevent . “

But the very imminence of danger in
those mines of the Wallsend system that
begot in some men mere reckless despon
dency , kindled in others an exceptional
acuteness of sagacions wariness , and a fervid
religious sense . The Established Church had
little hold of the collier ground , which was
a very kindly soil for Wesleyanism and Pri
mitive Methodism . Secularly , the sense of
danger and the tongh athletic Northum
brian intellect combined to produce men
who have made their mark on the country’s
history . George Stephenson , as he wrought
his break in Killingworth Colliery , was
planning the locomotive , and constructing
his ” Geordie ; ” and from Killingworth he
went forth to be the author of our railway
system . Before the Fairbairns went to Man
chester and Leeds to found the vast works
that are now world – famous , they were
engineers at Percy Main . The Hawthorns
of Newcastle , whose engine works are
among the largest in the country , came
” to bank ” from out the Wallsend Colliery ,
and Story , the engineer , under Stephen
son , of the York and Darlington Railway ,
worked as a miner in Wellington Colliery .
The list might be lengthened indefinitely ,
for Stephenson , knowing his men , was
prone to make drafts on the clear heads
and sagacious brains he wotted of among
the people he had toiled with in his early
days . The pitmen of the now dormant
Wallsend colliery system have imparted
their distinguishing characteristics to the
whole mass of their younger brethren , the
pitmen of Northumberland generally . The
race is the same in physique and in men
tal characteristics – harsh – featured , manly
eyed , and stalwart ; energetic , stickling for
independence , and genial under the rugged
upper crust .

As the workings of the Wallsend system
ramified widely and more widely , the water
enemy became more and more aggressive .
The workings had been conducted waste
fully , as was the manner in the early days ,
and there were evidences that the upper
and more easily worked scams were ap

proaching exhaustion . The water gained
so rapidly that the pumps in use could not
make head against it . There was no stu
pendous catastrophe as the grand finale .
What seemed the inevitable was timeously
recognised , and from mine after mine horses
and plant were brought to bank , the pumps
were knocked off , and the water left to
work its imperious will . The gradual
abandonment occurred in the decade be
tween 1835 to 1845 , Wellington and Heaton
being the last two mines to maintain a
resistance . One of the mines , indeed , and
that , too , on as low a level as any , the
Walker Colliery , worsted the water , and
is working to this day . Its engineer ,
a man of prudence and foresight , saw the
impending doom , and took in time his
mensures to avert it . In the Walker
pit the water is ” tubbed off ; ” in other
words , the shaft is continued through
what may be called the water stratum by
an iron tubing or skin , and at present the
lower seams , quite below the inundated
stratum , are being successfully worked with I
hardly any inconvenience from water . Kil
lingworth and Gosforth , on the outer fringes
of the system , and on a higher level , also
continue to be worked without great in
convenience from that subterranean lake
which has inundated the mines of the
system on the lower level . But Wallsend
Main , old and new , is drowned , so are
Percy Main , Howdon , Bigg’s Main , and
Heaton , all of high repute in the first half
of the century as yielding the best house
hold coals leaving the Tyne .

Mining engineers know that there is
still much fine coal in the old upper work
ings of the flooded mines , and that below
these , in the lower seams , there lies a vast
quantity of somewhat inferior , but still
readily merchantable coal . There are still
fortunes at the bottom of the Wallsend pits ,
if only they could be reached and cleared
of water . Modern enterprise has essayed
the task . In 1867 , the Tyne Coal Company
was formed , having for its object the pump
ing the water out of these mines , with a
view to subsequent working . The unfruitful
royalties were acquired from the representa
tives of the ” grand allies , ” and pumping
operations commenced . A special pumping
shaft was constructed and powerful pumps
put down , which have been working con
tinuously for over five years , throwing out
in the day many thousand tons of water ,
which forms a steady stream like a monn
tain burn . Immense cost has been incurred ,
and some impression has been made on the
subterranean water . Hebburn Colliery , on

the south side of the Tyne , but connected
subterraneously with the northern system ,
has been pumped out , and is now at work ;
the northern collieries still remain drowned .
Let us hope that some day or other the per
sistent energy which is at work upon them
will be crowned with success , and that
the engineman at the big pump on the
knoll over against Percy Main will have it
to shout , ” She sucks ! “
Meanwhile , the consumer need not adopt
so strong a measure as to give his coal
merchant in charge for obtaining money
under false pretences , because he sells
what he designates ” Wallsend coals . ” The
name has come to be adopted as a mer
cantile generic appellation for all house
hold coals of a certain quality , no matter
where won , just as Hartley is the name
for all northern steam coal , although the
broken cross beam still hangs over the
disused shaft of Hartley pit proper . It
may be said , indeed , that in all these
grand desiderata of household coal , high
bituminous properties , specific gravity ,
and heavy brown ash , the Wallsends , in
compare their palmiest days , could not
successfully with conls like the Hettons and
others , now wrought in the Durham house
hold coal field .