The Colliery

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

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

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

• Colliery Lamp Cabin - where miners would start and end each shift underground.  See the lamps on display and learn how they were cleaned, maintained and lit.
• Drift Mine - take a guided tour underground to see how coal was mined.  The Mahogany drift mine opened in the 1850s and worked for around 100 years.
• Colliery Winding Engine - this magnificent 150-year-old steam engine is the sole survivor of a type once common throughout the northern coalfield.
• Heapstead and Screens - came from Ravensworth Park Drift Mine.  Men, ponies, coal tubs and equipment were carried up and down the mine shaft in the cages here.
• Engine Shed - houses industrial steam locomotives from the 1870s.