Broomhill Colliery Fire. Heapstead Destroyed. 1899
 

Another fire from the newspaper archives. From reports after this one it looks like they managed to quickly bring another shaft in to operation for transport of coal and men, so the effects weren't as dire as suggested here.

date is Saturday 25th November 1899, Shields Daily Gazette.


SERIOUS PIT FIRE NEAR AMBLE.

HEAPSTEAD DESTROYED.

2,000 HANDS LAID IDLE.

Our Amble correspondent wires-
About 2 o’clock this morning a fire was observed near the shaft of the colliery at Broomhill.
The alarm was immediately given, and a large crowd hurried to the scene of the conflagration.
Owing to the inflammable nature of the heapstead, the whole structure was within 30 minutes
one sheet of flame. Nothing could be done to stop the fire, and the whole structure was raised
to the ground in a short time. The cage ropes were also burned, and the cages fell into the bottom
of the shaft. No coals will be drawn for some time, and the fire will cause nearly 2,000 men and
boys to be laid idle for a considerable time. How the fire originated is unknown.





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It is, but where's Dawsons Drift?

My uncle left the pits, took up being a chef in Middlesborough, volunteered for the army same time as my dad (1940), got put into cooking :) Not what he had in mind as my dad was a gunner in RA, got a transfer and was killed at Tobruk in 1941. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

I think this is Dawson's Drift. 600 yards South of Togston Barns? (green text is mine)

Nice one Coquet, thanks.

Dawsons drift.
 

Spot on Coquet, as you can see it used the same tramway to the colliery as East togston did.
The fire on the heapstead at Broomhill was assisted by the fact it was constructed of wood apparently, the replacement, which I would think would be still there at the end , was steel framed and covered with corrugated steel sheets as was the one at Hauxley.

bromhill colliyer
 

the spiryrel staircase at ellington i remember running down them and being dissey when i got out. the stapel for holding coal had a chewer at the top so coal to big didn't get though it was two drums with picks on spining around it was said in some mines some men didn't get off the belt in time and went into the picks ,nothing left just a mess.

Never knew the name of this Drift entrance as it was all sealed off when we were kids.There was also a stable block about a hundred yards from this drift.also another drift was located up at the end of the other tramway.

Re Togston Barns
 

Just been on good old Google Earth following Morph up-loading overlays. I followed the road from Broomhill to Togston Barns. Although a lot has changed over the years because of opencast mining,they did a good job putting everything back, I was delighted to find something very familiar.
Most of the Amble/Broomhill railway had to go, but, as you approach Togston Barns from the west the bridge stonework and safety barriers under which the railway went, are still visible. I wonder, does that mean that below the earth which levelled the area, is the bridge still intact beneath?
There were some brilliant blackberries grew in that area!!

I have often wondered about that bridge and how it was filled in as the spoil underneath must have settled? and consequently there must be a small void underneath. Therefore, was the bridge a stone arch or a metal span construction? if it is the later will it not rust and the road collapse eventually?

From what I remember (in the distant past), it looked very similar to Mark's Bridge in Amble, just a bit smaller. It doesn't seem to look like that now, so perhaps it's been replaced at some point to stop that happening?

Togston Barns Bridge
 

Hi Hollydog. My memory may have been altered by old age but I think it was of brick construction, the same as Broomhill bridge. If I am correct then any settling would not change the strength of the bridge. (But I think I will use the High Road, just in case!!!)

I wish you had taken more pictures too! I remember going along the old railway line from Amble out past Hope Farm with my granda and seeing at least one brick structure sticking up out of the ground. I think there were two of them, but its very very fuzzy in in the old memory.

He said that they were the old colliery shafts. I was only about 6 or 7 at the time and thats about all i can remember.

They looked like they were square at the top. I have never found them on any old maps and there is nothing remaining now as its all been opencasted like you said. It would be intersting to see if anyone knows anything else about them.

Colliery shafts.
 

Those were the shafts of Togston Colliery, just a bit past the Hope Bridge, on the right, from Amble. There were two, one surrounded by brick the other a stone wall. This is covered at length in another thread.

Fire - Broomhill Colliery
 

COQUET - Broomhill Colliery had a fire district near the shaft bottom. Does anyone know if that was caused by pressure on coal columns after mining, other pressure such as beneath the pit heap, or some other cause such as a carry over from the shaft fire, which you mentioned, of 1899? It wasn't a particularly deep shaft.
The stables at the shaft bottom were quite near so the gallawa's were never exactly cold!

Underground fires in coal are caused by spontaneous combustion, often in the 'goaf' (waste area after the bulk of the coal has been extracted) it can spread into the coal seam proper and is very difficult to extinguish.

Low level oxidation of coal and timber underground goes on all the time, and can produce pockets of CO2 which you can wander into blissfully unaware and drop down dead.

At Ellington I carried a CO2 detector when sent into old workings to check on pumps etc. I say CO2 detector but they were in fact oxygen detectors - when the oxygen level falls below a certain percentage it would alarm and that was time to turn around and head in the other direction an inform an official. (Reducing oxygen levels in the mine environment means rising CO2)

So in a mine you have this full range of oxidation right up to full blown coal seam fires. An intermediate stage is called a 'heating' signalled by higher levels of combustion gases in the mine atmosphere telling us that runaway combustion is imminent, and action must immediately be taken. The general strategy in fighting these fires is to isolate the area by building concrete "stoppings" in all the access tunnels to cut off the air supply. The area is lost - and sometimes the mine! (Lynemouth Colliery fire).


Broomhill must have had a heating or fire at one time, and it's this sealed off district you recall?

Re: Fire
 

Thanks Coquet. When I first went underground at Broomhill I 'Travelled the Waste'. That is, with a deputy, I took airflow measurements in all working areas. This also at the shaft bottom area, measuring to see if air was being drawn into or escaping from the fire district. It is fair to say that I helped take readings but was never privvy to the results of what we had handed in at the end of each shift. For all I knew we could have found that we could spontaeneously combust!!! That was 1955/56. I suppose things moved on from there safetywise. I suppose the same information is still extracted from mines but probably in a more sophisticated manner.

Thanks Alan, I'll have a look. For years I thought I had imagined them!

Morph, your info' is on the Togston/ Broomhill site complete with map showing your shafts just above the Hope bridge.

Thanks Alan, I read the other post you mentioned where you used to play around them as a child! I had never realised they were the shafts on the map. It always seemed they were nearer to Amble than that and I had never realised they were part of those workings. The information on here is amazing and its great that people like you remember all this and post it. Thanks again.

!944 ?
 

Anyone remember these guys