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Exhibitions
- 'Adventurers and Pirates' - Hetton Coal Company, 1820
- Looking back at Consett Steel Works
- Celebrating Gala Day 2020
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County Durham remembers VE Day 1945
- 'We have come through' - Remembering VE Day 1945
- 9th Battalion DLI: From D-Day to Berlin
- 9th Battalion DLI: VE Day
- 9th Battalion DLI: In Berlin, June - September 1945
- Berlin Victory Parade, 7 September 1945
- Victory Parade at Belsen, 8 May 1945
- The Northern Echo, Victory edition, 9 May 1945
- VE Day and Durham Schools
- 2nd Battalion DLI: Burma 1945
- 2nd Battalion DLI: Rangoon Victory Parade, 15 June 1945
- VE Day and the Durham Miners' Association
- County Durham celebrates VE Day
- Haswell Victory Celebrations, 1945
- Soldier: Victory Souvenir edition, 8 May 1945
- Parade: European Victory edition, 26 May 1945
- VE Day not forgotten by one Spennymoor family
- County Durham celebrates VJ Day
- Victory Day, 8 June 1946
A new era in coal mining history
Part of an online exhibition to mark the Hetton Coal Company's pioneering advances in mining and railway technology in 1820.
Early trials
Hetton le Hole is on the lower slopes of the magnesian limestone escarpment that runs through County Durham. The Vane Tempest collieries that Arthur Mowbray had managed from 1799 to 1819 were below this escarpment but what he was now planning was to sink a shaft on higher ground to the east, through the limestone, something that had not been achieved before. Mineralogists at the time were generally of the opinion that coal did not exist in this area or, if it did, it would have deteriorated in quality.
Test borings for coal had been undertaken since 1772 and, in 1796, the owner of the Hetton estate, John Lyon, employed Messrs Rawling to test for coal, which they found at about 160 metres (500 feet). Five years later John Buddle, at the time advising Mowbray the new manager of the Vane Tempest Collieries, purchased the results of the Rawlings' survey. In 1811, John Lyon commissioned a colliery shaft at Hetton, but ran out of funds.
When he was sacked from the Vane Tempest Collieries in 1819, Mowbray saw the opportunity and negotiated with Lyon for the rights to mine coal. The Hetton Coal Company and Hetton Lyons coal were born.
Detail of the colliery from 'Hetton Colliery in the County of Durham. Perspective view of the Works of the Colliery, the Horizontal, Inclined and Self-Acting Planes with the Loco Motive and other Engines used on the Rail Way and the Staiths and Self Discharging Depot on the Banks of the River Wear near Sunderland', by [Thomas Robson], c.1822 (NCB 1/X 37).
The technical achievement
The technical achievement was immense, using ground-breaking technology to successfully sink a pit shaft through permeable limestone for the first time. Work began on 19 December 1820 and sinking the shaft was exceedingly difficult.
Water was a problem - Mowbray stated in publicity for the opening of the colliery that for the first three months 5,000 gallons per minute of water were pumped from a depth of 60 yards. It took until 3 September 1822 to reach the main coal seam at a depth of 148 yards - where they found the coal to be 'superior both in its quality and the thickness of its seam'.
Detail of strata from 'Hetton Colliery in the County of Durham. Perspective view of the Works of the Colliery, the Horizontal, Inclined and Self-Acting Planes with the Loco Motive and other Engines used on the Rail Way and the Staiths and Self Discharging Depot on the Banks of the River Wear near Sunderland', by [Thomas Robson], c.1822 (NCB 1/X 37).