Marley Hill

Marley Hill Colliery and the adjoining coke works were situated in the area known as Old Marley Hill, further along St. Cuthbert's Road (which is closed to vehicles beyond a large metal gate just past St. Cuthbert's Park), and at one time most of the village, including houses, a shop, the original post office and two Chapels (Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist, the latter being situated at the end of one of the rows of colliery houses, reputedly earning it the nickname "Ranter's Row") was centred around the colliery itself. There was also a row of very basic houses which was originally called Fen House Row, after a large house which stood in the field behind them, but came to be known simply as "The Hole" or "The Valley." Heading towards the pit, these were on the right hand side of St. Cuthbert's road, just beyond the gate. The houses backed onto the steep hillside along the pit road, and some of them were flattened by a landslide around the turn of the 20th century. The rest were demolished in 1920. There were also three terraces nearer the A6076 which runs from Sunniside to Stanley; Bowes Terrace, Gibraltar Row, and Marley Hill Terrace. These were known collectively as Andrews Houses. Bowes terrace is visible on the 1938 OS map, but appears to have been demolished by 1951. Gibraltar Row and Marley Hill terrace last appear on the 1966 map but some of the houses were certainly still extant as late as 1973, albeit in a derelict condition, as they appear in the background of a photograph taken that year.

Bowes Bridge MPD (a sub-shed of Gateshead MPD) on the North Eastern Railway's Tanfield Branch was also in this area, and the disused Turntable pit and coaling stage for the locomotives are still extant alongside the Tanfield Railway, whose car park now occupies the site of Gibraltar Row and Marley Hill Terrace. Bowes Terrace occupied the high ground on the opposite side of the Tanfield Branch, overlooking Marley Hill engine shed, (reputed to be the world's oldest working example) which is still in use by the Tanfield Railway for the storage and maintenance of its locomotives. A number of additional buildings have been constructed around the shed in the years since the site became a heritage railway, including sheds for the storage of out-of use locomotives and rolling stock, a shed for the restored carriages used on the passenger services, as well as a number of workshops. The mine tubs from outside the school were restored in the railway's woodwork shop. Marley Hill shed was actually on the Bowes Railway, which crossed the Tanfield Branch on the level beside the signal box and was owned by the National Coal Board after nationalisation in 1947, whereas the Tanfield branch (by this time part of the London & North Eastern Railway) came under the control of British Railways. There are bus stops either side of the road here, which would have originally been used by the occupants of Andrews Houses. These are now used mainly by visitors to the Tanfield Railway, and are served by Go North East routes X30 and X31 from Stanley, except Sundays, when only X31 operates. Both terminate at Newcastle, but X31 follows the same route previously used by the X30, via Lobley Hill and Gateshead, while the X30 now deviates from this at Sunniside, following a similar route to that of the old 706 via Sunniside Road, Whickham Highway and Dunston Bank.

The majority of the houses in this area were very basic, and were in an extremely poor condition by the time they were demolished. Some were of a similar design to the houses in the pit village^[5] at the nearby Beamish Museum,^[6] and others were built as back-to-backs, a type common in Yorkshire (large numbers remain in Leeds), Lancashire and the Midlands but rarely seen in the north-east. The Bowes Railway ran through a cutting east of the signal box, and the Stanley road crossed it on a bridge. After the closure of the line, this bridge was no longer necessary, and the cutting was backfilled, although the western end of it is still visible adjacent to the box, forming the headshunt of the shed yard. There was also another colliery in this area; [ Andrews House Colliery,^[7] which was served by a spur from the Bowes Railway, part of which is still in existence. This is the section of track which crosses the entrance to the shed yard and passes behind the shed, beneath the former coal drops, and continues a short distance to the rear of the site.

Coal was also mined from Blackburn Fell Drift,^[8] on the other side of the Stanley road, which was served by the Bowes Railway. It had a relatively short life compared to the deep mine, being driven in 1937 and closing in 1979, with the men transferring to Marley Hill. In contrast to those of its neighbours, the surface buildings of this mine (including stables for the pit ponies) survived in a derelict condition for over twenty years, and the partially blocked entrance to the drift itself, (with tub lines emerging from it) was still visible beneath one of them right up until they were finally removed in the early 21st century. Although the main surface structures are gone, a small hut made from the yellow bricks characteristic of many local colliery buildings stands on the hill overlooking the site of the drift, on the opposite side of Birklands Lane. Its windows and door have been bricked up, and a small chimney-like structure which appears to be some kind of vent projects from the roof at one end. Looking from the point where the drift emerged, (and assuming the drift ran in a relatively straight line) this structure appears to sit directly above the main roadway. It is therefore a possibility that it housed pumps or an emergency access shaft, or both. This structure does not appear on the 1921 OS map, but is visible on the map from 1951 (the area is not covered on the 1938–39 map), so it is probably safe to assume that it is in some way associated with the drift. The trackbed of the Bowes Railway on this side of the Stanley road is now a cycle path, and continues from the site of the drift's screens, past Birkheads Cottages and the adjoining Birkheads Secret Gardens]^[9] and on to Kibblesworth, where the next colliery on the line was situated.

Andrews House Colliery closed in 1920. The coke works closed in 1937, with coke production transferred to the newly constructed Monkton Coke Works at the other end of the Bowes Railway near Hebburn, which would eventually become the last operational battery of coke ovens in the area, finally closing in 1991. Many of the men formerly employed at the Marley Hill ovens found work in the newly opened Blackburn Fell Drift. In later years, the coal produced at the colliery was removed in diesel-hauled sets of tubs via the Clockburn Drift, which opened in 1952 and connected underground with the Marley Hill workings. This emerged about two miles from the shafts, on the south bank of the River Derwent. Upon exiting the drift, the tubs of coal immediately crossed the river on a bridge just upstream of the Butterfly Bridge^[10] at Winlaton Mill.^[11] The coal was then screened and washed, and taken either to Derwenthaugh Staiths at the confluence of the Derwent and the Tyne, or was used at Derwenthaugh Coke Works. The sites of the railway sidings serving the drift, the coke ovens, and the associated coal preparation plant, power station and chemical works have been decontaminated and extensively landscaped, with the only obvious piece of evidence that mining has taken place nearby being the iron-stained water issuing from the ground above the buried drift entrance as a result of the drift acting as a drainage adit for the colliery workings.

At the end of the 1970s there were very few collieries left in the area, and with the closure of Eden Colliery^[12] in 1980, Marley Hill, which had for some time been the last colliery in Gateshead, became one of the only three remaining colliers in the west of the coalfield. Although most of the seams were relatively thin, and therefore did not lend themselves easily to mechanisation, the high quality coking coal they yielded had ensured the colliery's longevity. However, a number of factors proved to be the colliery's undoing. The stationary engines which had powered the line shafting in workshops and factories had been ousted by the arrival of smaller and more efficient electric motors, and electric pumps had almost completely replaced large beam engines at water works. (Ironically, the coal mining industry had been one of the earliest to spot the potential advantages of electricity as a source of power- using it for everything from lighting to pumping to powering locomotives, thereby nurturing the technology that would one day play a significant part in its downfall.) British Rail's huge fleet of steam locomotives had gone by the end of the 1960s, and by the late 70s even the NCB's locomotive fleet consisted almost entirely of diesels. The decline of the steel industry greatly reduced the demand for coke and the exploitation of the North Sea oil and gas reserves and the resulting changeover of the domestic gas supply virtually eliminated any demand for coal gas. At around the same time, the gradual transition from coal and coke fires to gas central heating for domestic purposes was well under way, further reducing demand for coal. Although power stations still had an enormous appetite for coal, this could be easily met by the massive undersea mines in the east of the coalfield, as well as the large opencast sites in Northumberland. The writing was on the wall for smaller collieries like Marley Hill.

Closure finally came in 1983, shortly followed by Bearpark^[13] in 1984 and Sacriston^[14] in 1985. Ten years after the last coals were drawn from Marley Hill, the closure of the coastal collieries (including Wearmouth Colliery)^[15] in Sunderland, to which a number of Marley Hill miners had transferred after their own pit closed, saw deep mining in the Durham coalfield finally come to an end, leaving Ellington Colliery^[16] in Northumberland as the only north-east pit to survive into the new millennium.

Deep mining was (and still is), a dangerous undertaking, and although it was never the scene of a major disaster like that at the nearby Burns Pit, Marley Hill Colliery was no stranger to the accidents which plagued the industry. In total, around thirty-nine miners lost their lives at the colliery during its one hundred and forty-two years of operation. Some of those killed are buried in St. Cuthbert's churchyard. In addition to the various fatalities which occurred underground, one man was killed when a boiler exploded, and the proximity of the various railway lines and sidings to the houses (with the shunting of wagons taking place day and night) yielded tragic results on at least two occasions: firstly in 1888, when a four-year-old girl called Elizabeth Langdon was knocked down and killed by a locomotive while walking on the branch that served the original beehive coke ovens which gave Coke Row its name, and again fifty-four years later, when a Mr. John Mitchell was struck by a locomotive while walking home from the colliery at the end of a shift. The date of this particular incident (7 Dec 1942) suggests that he may have been walking in the dark under wartime blackout conditions. A possible explanation as to how the collision was not avoided is that Mr. Mitchell and the driver of the locomotive simply did not see each other in the dark. Steam locomotives would have presented a unique threat under such conditions because, unlike diesels, when not working particularly hard they can move remarkably quietly. The noisy environment of a colliery yard, with the constant rattle of unbraked wagons being shunted could no doubt quite easily mask the sound of a locomotive approaching in the dark. Even if Mr. Mitchell had heard the locomotive, (and assuming it was in fact dark at the time) it is quite possible that it would have been difficult to pinpoint its exact location on the maze of points and sidings by sound alone.

Although a return to traditional deep mining methods in Marley Hill and the surrounding area is extremely unlikely, substantial reserves of coal remain. However, these reserves remain largely untapped as they would need to be obtained by opencast mining. This has already proven to be controversial, with a planning application to extract 480,000 tonnes of coal and 100,000 tonnes of fireclay on an area of farmland at Skon's Park, just north of Burnopfield coming up against strong local objection, particularly from Derwent Residents Against Mining Application (DRAMA), led by Burnopfield resident Eddie Stringer, who were supported by former miner and Labour MP Dave Anderson, several Liberal Democrat councillors and the National Trust. These objections centred primarily on the potential issues of noise and dust, large numbers of heavy goods vehicles travelling through Marley Hill, Byermoor and Sunniside, as well as the proposed mine's close proximity to the Gibside Estate. The National Trust eventually bought the 150 acres of land in question for £500,000 to prevent further mining applications. As of July 2011, another application, to mine coal in an area adjacent to Birkland Lane near Hedley Hall Farm (to the south-east of the site of Blackburn Fell Drift) has been submitted to Gateshead Council's planning department. Although Liberal Democrat councillor Jonathan Wallace immediately voiced concerns, this application has a greater likelihood of being approved than the proposed Skon's Park site, as this area has a much smaller population, does not lie near the Gibside Estate and an opencast mine was operating nearby relatively recently.

After closure, the headgears and other machinery at Marley Hill Colliery were scrapped and the buildings levelled. A hole was knocked into the wall of the square building which enclosed the top of the upcast shaft, and the rubble from the rest of the buildings tipped in to backfill it. This process having been completed, the building was demolished and a large concrete cap placed over the mouth of each shaft. There appear to be only two remaining buildings directly associated with the colliery. One of these is an airlock above a backfilled ventilation shaft from the Clockburn Drift, hidden away in Clockburn Wood near Whickham. The shaft was known as the Hollinside Shaft and actually pre-dates the drift as it was originally part of Axwell Park Colliery,^[17] which was situated roughly a mile to the north-east. This colliery closed in 1954 after men from Marley Hill began working its remaining reserves beneath Hollinside and Gibside via the drift, at which point the NCB installed a fan to aid ventilation, these workings being some distance from the Shafts at Marley Hill Colliery itself. The other remaining structure is a curious rendered brick hut with double-walled construction and heavy steel doors, which stands in the middle of a field to the south of St. Cuthbert's Park. It is best to consult Google Earth to pinpoint the location. This is the colliery's former powder magazine, where explosives for use underground were stored. It was presumably constructed sometime in the first couple of years of the 20th century, as the bricks used, which bear the name "Blythe & Sons, Birtley Station" along with the letters ER (Edward VII) and the date 1901, are of the same type (stamped 1903 and 1904) used to construct Church Street, Cuthbert Street and Glamis Terrace. It has evidently been designed to direct the force of any explosion upwards, with its isolated location meaning that the resulting debris would not land on the surrounding houses or colliery buildings. It is (for unknown reasons) sometimes referred to locally as "the butterfly chambers" and fell out of use some time before the colliery closed, with one former Marley Hill miner recalling playing in it as a child. A new explosives store was built to replace it, this building being situated near the pit head baths.

The land on which the original village and the pit itself stood (along with the site of the cokeworks, Andrews House Colliery and Bowes Bridge MPD) has lain empty since the colliery was demolished, although the foundations of a number of buildings, a few old concrete lamp-posts, some of the tub lines, and the concrete caps covering the backfilled shafts are still clearly visible. The upcast shaft is on top of the hill overlooking the yard of the Tanfield Railway, and the two caps covering the coal-drawing shafts can be found in a gully just to the north of it, hidden among the trees. Until around 2010, the metal floor tiles of the pit head baths were still in situ, but have since been removed by scrap thieves. The stables are easily identifiable, with drainage channels running down the centre, and post-holes where the stalls would have been. The steps leading up to the door of the colliery's office block are still in situ, and Peruvian Lilies can still be found where the flower beds at the front of the building were. Considerable numbers of Crocosmia and Lupins can also be found growing in the area where the screens and headgear of the coal-drawing shafts once stood, most likely as a result of somebody tipping garden waste. The NCB sign which stood at the entrance to the colliery yard is now on display in the Tanfield Railway's carriage shed. Almost thirty years after closure, nature has largely reclaimed the site, with an abundance of wildlife having taken up residence, and the area is well known locally for the rich pickings to be had when blackberries are in season. However, the entire area remains covered in spoil from the two collieries (as does the site of Byermoor Colliery) and there is still a considerable amount of junk, such as steel toe-capped wellingtons, compressed air hoses and ventilation ducting lying around in the undergrowth. Fly tipping has also been a problem, with a notable incident occurring on the Tanfield Railway's coal train day in October 1998, when a vast heap of tyres which had been dumped in the gill adjacent to the site of the cokeworks was set alight. The fire destroyed a number of trees, and was visible from trains on the incline between Bobgins Crossing and Andrews House Station. The land is now owned by UK Coal, and a sign by the gate on St. Cuthbert's Road bearing the company's former name (RJB Mining) warns against fly-tipping.

Despite most of the area now being covered in trees and shrubs, very little vegetation other than patchy grass and a few scrubby trees grows on the site of the cokeworks and associated chemical works, indicating the presence of the very high levels of ground contamination associated with such industries (some of the miners recall working in an area directly beneath the works' former tar beds and being able to smell tar which had seeped down into the coal seams, while contaminants such as a cyanide containing compound known as "blue billy" have also been detected in the soil). On 29 May 2012, a public consultation was held at the community centre to discuss proposals by UK Coal to remove 900,000 tonnes of high quality coal (described as being "like rocket fuel" compared to the "rough coal" being mined at the Potland Burn and Butterwell sites in Northumberland) from beneath the area by opencast mining, as part of a four-year scheme to reclaim the heavily contaminated site. Part of the proposals, should planning permission be granted are to extend the Tanfield Railway along the former route of the Bowes Railway to Byermoor. Presumably any services to Byermoor would either run from Andrews House, or bring the disused Marley Hill Station just to the north of the shed back into use.

The summit of the high ground between the Tyne, Derwent and Team valleys is to the West of the village, about halfway between Byermoor and Marley Hill itself and is surmounted by an outcrop known as Blackamoor Hill. This area is known as High Marley Hill. It consists of three cottages beside the road, a large house which is accessed via School House Lane, Longfield Farm, a pallet works which occupies the former High Marley Hill School buildings, and several buildings surrounding a large radio antenna currently operated by Arquiva. This sits on top of Blackamoor Hill, from where it is able to broadcast signals across a considerable area (from the rear of Cuthbert Street on a clear day it is possible to see as far as the mouth of the Tyne, and as far North as the RAF's radar station at Brizlee Wood near Alnwick, and from ground level at High Marley Hill the visible area stretches into the North Pennines and East as far as Penshaw Hill near Sunderland). The existing mast replaced an earlier 140 foot mast that was part of the network known as the Medium Frequency Regional Scheme that provided police radio broadcasts between the early 1940s and '50s and covered the area between North Yorkshire and the Scottish border. This was decommissioned when the more modern system using two-way radios was introduced. In early 1942 a Hawker Hurricane crashed in poor weather into an orchard across the road from mast, killing its Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, 24 year old Sergeant James D'Arcy Lees Graham. There is a plaque commemorating the incident in the community centre.

There was an anti-aircraft battery near High Marley Hill during World War II, and a drift mine which closed in the 1960s, as did the nearby Byermoor Colliery.^[18] The 1951 OS map shows an opencast mine in the field beside the road, near the farm (marked on the map as Longfield House) and there is an embankment which runs parallel to School House Lane, from the site of the drift to the remains of a large retaining wall. This was presumably a loading point on the Bowes Railway, the trackbed of which is still visible, running alongside St. Cuthbert's Road. The presence of a large flat area of waste ground on the opposite side of the road to the wall is a possible indication there were railway sidings here. It is not known whether this loading point also handled the output of the opencast. The 1951 map also shows a terrace called Waggonway Row just beside the retaining wall. The outline of these houses can be seen from the air and is visible on Google Maps. The large house on School House Lane has several outbuildings which appear to have been associated with the drift. This would explain the presence of a sign on the wall of the building nearest the road which reads "UK Coal Monitoring Station." Exactly what this is monitoring is unclear, although it is likely to be mine water or gas. School House Lane forms the southern end of St. Cuthbert's Road, and vehicular access beyond the large house is prevented by a large concrete block which has been placed in the centre of the lane.

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