1926 Strike

Terms Submitted by the Owners in the Districts, 1926.

Terms of Settlement in the Districts, 1926-27.

Opencast Coal Mining

A brief history and description of the opencast coal mining industry as published by British Coal Opencast in 1991.

General Mining History

Here we present two different accounts of the history of coal mining in County Durham.

The first comes from The Victoria History of the Counties of England - Durham, published in three volumes in 1907. It contains a large section on the history of coal mining in the county. This work focuses on the detailed history and does not cover the social or practical side of the industry. We have reproduced the text up to the start of the nineteenth century.

The second comes from The History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan, second edition, published in 1894. Once again there is a large section of the history of coal mining in the county, however, it concentrates on the nineteenth century, but the major part covers the practical and the social side of mining during the nineteenth century.

The two works complement each other, and together present an overall history of the coal industry in County Durham. The history is nor complete without coverage of the twentieth century and the eventual demise of the industry - this topic is too large and complex to cover here and is best left to the many books on the subject. We do however, provide some information for the twentieth century in the individual pages on each colliery.

Where we have included illustrations they have been taken from other sources, not the above mentioned volumes.