The wider landscape has been heavily influenced by coal mining. County Hall, Durham, DH1 5UL, United Kingdom
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The industry had a profound effect on trade unionism, public health and housing, and mines safety. Information about mining history and coal mining records in Durham County Record Office. Tree and woodland cover varies considerably, the valleys being very open in places and heavily wooded or rich in hedgerow trees elsewhere. It extends from Bishop Auckland in the south to the boundary with the county of Northumberland along the River Tyne in the north, beyond which is the Northumberland Coalfield.. We are a themed promotion based on the heritage of mining in the area. The landscape of the coalfield has been heavily influenced by urban and industrial development and its scattered mining towns and villages and busy roads give it a semi-rural or urban fringe character in places. For some miles in breadth along the western side, only a few of the lower seams are worked; then in a line ranging through Newcastle to Durham, we get the full number of the workable seams; and again following a sinuous course from Tynemouth past Houghton-le-Spring to near Bishop Auckland, the overlying Permian formation succeeds, represented by a generally bold outline of Magnesian Limestone resting on the irregular lower red sand, which, from its water-bearing and loose properties, presents great difficulties to the sinking of shafts eastward of this line. The larger rivers have narrow floodplains. Durham Coalfield; Durham Coalfield. The DMA records held here complement the DMA collection at the North East England Mining and Research Centre (NEEMARC) in Sunderland University Library. [email protected] | +44 (0)3000 The higher ridges and valley heads in the west are generally very open and pastoral, with large regular fields bounded by sparse overgrown hawthorn hedges, dry stone walls or fences with few hedgerow trees. Taken from The History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan. The Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. Ancient oak woods are found in steep sided denes and, together with alder woods, on the banks of rivers and streams. Fragments of heathland survive on infertile or waterlogged acidic soils. Most of these fields were laid out in parliamentary enclosures of the 18th century and contain isolated farms linked by straight roads and lanes. Second edition published in 1894. From the natural boundaries of the River Tyne and the North Sea it extended to Consett and beyond Bishop Auckland in the west. To Search the Catalogue for National Coal Board records select Public Records from the Catalogue category drop-down list.
There are Quick Links to all database search screens on our Home page. Relatively little recent work published, but there is the Durham Mining Museum Website which also covers Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland and North Yorkshire.1 Emery covered the technical development of collieries, coke making and pit villages.2, Recent surveys include Temple (1994 and later volumes); Guy and Atkinson (2008, 41-75) includes a good overview of the coal industry in West Durham (which includes most of the exposed coalfield).3,4, The county council’s geographical information system is available on the web and includes a range of historic Ordnance Survey maps, which is useful for studying mining history.5, When the coal industry was nationalised in 1947, there were 234 collieries in Co Durham; now there are none.
The Durham coalfield covered north, east and central Durham. It was mined in substantial quantities even in medieval times.
Ancient oak woods are found in narrow steep sided denes, and along the banks of rivers and streams. }, Understanding and conserving the diversity of the County Durham Landscape. Coniferous plantations are found on higher valley sides and ridges. Within the coalfield valleys the Coalfield Valley Floodplain landscapes, with their very different landform, soils and historical development, are identified as a separate landscape type. Find out how to search our collections and online indexes to Durham Collieries and Durham miners.
Mining villages of Victorian terraced housing of brick or stone and welsh slate and later estate housing are scattered across the valleys and ridges. Developed by DCC Web Team. [3], The following coal seams are recorded from the Durham coalfield.
Buildings are of local sandstone with roofs of stone or welsh slate. To search for records of landowners select Estate and Family Records from the Catalogue category drop-down list. Coal was a very rich mineral resource in County Durham.
Fragments of heathland survive on infertile acidic soils. See How and why did Crook develop in the period between 1851 and 1901? The difficulties are the considerable depths of the sinkings in the newer pits, the watery strata to be pierced, and the large amount of fire-damp given off by many of the seams. Extensive areas of land have been opencast or reclaimed and their landscape often lacks maturity. Durham Collieries (Durham: Durham County Record Office, 2001), Emery, N. The Coalminers of Durham (Alan Sutton, 1992), Temple, D. The Collieries of County Durham (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Trade Union Printing, 1994), Guy, A.
And these resuts appear to establish a curious point in the configuration of the coalfield. Our map features an inset showing the last of the collieries that closed across the region from the 1960s onward including the very last at Ellington, in Northumberland which closed in 2005 and of course Wearmouth (closed 1993) which was the very last mine in the populous Durham coalfield, where the Sunderland Stadium of Light now stands today. Locally within the more wooded sections of some valleys the scale is more intimate and enclosed. Old agricultural villages are scattered thinly across the landscape, often on ridge-top sites. Make a Keyword search to widen your search results. Soft and thinly bedded strata of Carboniferous sandstones, shales and coals give rise to gently rounded ridges with occasional steeper bluffs.
The glacial drift covering the valley floors and lower slopes is incised in places by the small becks and burns which now occupy the broad valleys of once much larger glacial streams.
The settlement pattern of the coalfield with its scattered mining villages doesn't relate strongly to this distinction - both upland frin…