The colliery at Beamish

Our next stop was at the colliery. Although we spent some time in the pit village on our last visit, we didn't explore the mine itself or the industrial buildings. Given my family history, it was important to me to do this.

Before exploring, we sat in the welcome sunshine to eat the packed lunch we had brought with us.

Throughout the 19th century, the Northumberland and Durham Coalfield produced about a quarter of the country's supplies. By 1913, the year of peak production in the Great Northern Coalfield, 165,246 men and boys worked in Durham's 304 mines.

The colliery at beamish depicts a typical small pit of the early 1900s. Most of the colliery buildings date from the 1850s and remained in use until 1962 when Beamish Second Pit closed. The site on which the museum stands was once at the heart of the Durham Coalfield.

The early 1900s was a prosperous period for North East miners, who were relatively well paid. However, it was a dangerous job. In 1913, on average, a miner was killed every five minutes.

We experienced some of the difficult conditions faced by miners when we did a short underground tour of the Mahogany Drift Mine. This mine opened on this site in 1855 and later closed before coming back into use in 1921 to take coal from Beamish Park Drift to Beamish Chophill Colliery. Its brickwork entrance was rebuilt in 1936.

Hewers working in the drift mines cut coal by hand or with compressed air coal cutters. They did this whilst lying on their sides, often in water, for up to 16 hours a day. Conditions were hot, dark, and cramped. We were only in there for about 20 minutes and modern health and safety rules meant that we weren't in complete darkness as the miners would have been, and we had very welcome ventilation keeping us cool. Even so, the tunnel wasn't tall enough for any of us to stand up straight and we did get a sense of what it must have been like for my ancestors. Rather them than me!Read more