Memories Of Easington Colliery.

Subscribe to my you tube channel for 200+ more coal mine tributes and counting. Easington Colliery is a town in County Durham, England, known for a history of coal mining. It is situated to the north of Horden, and a short distance to the east of Easington Village. The town suffered a significant mining accident on 29 May 1951, when an explosion in the mine resulted in the deaths of 83 men (including 2 rescue workers).Easington Colliery began when the pit was sunk in 1899, near the coast; indeed the pylon for the aerial flight that carried tubs of colliery waste from the mine stood just inside the North Sea.Thousands of workers came to the area from all parts of Britain and with the new community came new shops, pubs, clubs, and many rows of terraced "colliery houses" for the mine workers and their families.On 7 May 1993, the mine was closed, with the loss of 1,400 jobs, causing a decline in the local economy. The pit shaft headgear was demolished the following year.The town's former infant and junior schools were built in 1911. They are adjacent to Seaside Line but lie derelict. A development company bought the buildings in 2003 and applied for planning permission to build 39 residential units, but a public inquiry gave a ruling that protected the buildings from demolition. They have since been listed.
It was decided in 2009 to create a new unitary authority — Durham County Council — to cover the whole of the county, and most of Easington's staff moved into new offices in Seaham. Easington District Council's office building, which had been the department's home for over eighty years, was demolished in April 2013. The fixtures and fittings, including oak desks, from the council chamber were placed in storage at Beamish Museum.
A history of the Easington Colliery was published in the Journal of the North East History Society. The colliery in 1951,from the pit bottoms the main roadways extended 380 yards (350 m) to the north, where the West Level branched off and ran for 640 yards (590 m) west to the junction with the Straight North Headings, which head north via drifts into the Five Quarter seam. The West Level continued into a training area. Around 300 yards (270 m) along the Straight North Headings was a further junction where the First West Roads headed west. Some distance further on the second and third roads branched off.Along the First West roads were a number of headings both north and south. The seat of the explosion was at the far end, down the 3rd south heading.
At the end of the 3rd south heading a cross passage was driven and "long wall" excavation commenced on the retreating wall principle. The cutting machine travels from one end of the long wall to the other, and then back. The cuts are made towards the roads, thus the face retreats from where it started back towards the start of the headings. Behind the cut is a void into which spoil was placed and normally the roof is allowed to collapse upon this spoil as props are withdrawn. In the case of the 3rd south workings this collapse did not occur properly and a void developed above the spoil.At Easington in 1951 blunt picks from the coal cutter hit a patch of pyrites and generated sparks. The firedamp leaking from the void above the goaf was ignited. When firedamp explodes in a tunnel it generates a blast of gas which raises any coal dust lying around. The coal dust, being finely divided, in turn explodes and the resulting explosion propagates along the tunnel as a flame front. At Easington the explosion travelled down the south headings to the west roads and then along the west roads, down the straight north headings and into the main coal where it reached as far as the training area. Two falls occurred: one in the main coal shortly before the drifts leading to the straight north roads, the other in the Duckbill district shortly before the 3rd south heading.At that time Durham mines worked three production shifts and a maintenance shift. The fore-shift was from 03:30 to 11:07, the back-shift from 09:45 to 17:22 and night-shift from 16:00 to 23:37. The maintenance and repair shift was the stone-shift from 22:00 to 05:37. Shift timings related to going underground through to returning to the shaft top, therefore at 04:35 both the stone-shift and the fore-shift were underground at the faces. 38 men from the stone-shift and 43 from the fore-shift were killed, all but one instantly. The man who survived died of his injuries just a few hours later. As a result of the total loss of life in the vicinity there were no eye-witness accounts of the explosion or its immediate aftermath.One man (Frank Leadbitter) was at the shaft-bottom stables and led a party of men through the dust cloud towards the explosion. They headed along the main coal west haulage road towards the duckbill district. The Chief Inspector of Mines singled Leadbitter out for especial praise for continuing even after feeling what they thought was a second explosion.