Pit Village

No recreation of the history of North East England would be complete without a colliery and the people who worked and lived around it.

The Pit Village at Beamish is built around a typical colliery as it would have been in the early 1900s.

Flash player 9 or above required to view the slide show. 

Villages grew up around the mines, houses and coal were provided free in exhange for labour.  Pit communities were close knit and life revolved around the village. 

• Francis Street - a row of pit cottages brought to Beamish from Hetton-le-Hole.  They show the homes of a Methodist family, an Irish immigrant family and a miner's widow.
• The Methodist Chapel - once stood in Beamish village.  Local choirs occasionally give recitals in the chapel and the Sunday School Anniversary and Harvest Festival are celebrated here too.
• The Board School - the three re-built classrooms could accommodate around 200 children.  Attendance was compulsory up to the age of 12, but bright pupils often left earlier to help support their families.
• Davy’s Fried Fish Shop - a recreation of an Edwardian Fried Fish Shop that shows how the trade developed from Victorian times. Visitors can buy authentic Beef-dripping fried Fish and Chips, from a coal-fired range.

This video explains how the Miners were transported hundreds of feet under the ground: