Newburgh Colliery and Broomhill Overlays
 

Ok, here are the overlays for Broomhill Colliery and Newburgh Colliery with Radcliffe on too. If you look at the South West corner of the Newburgh map or the North East corner of the Broomhill map you can still see the shadow of the old track bed (I labelled it as the Amble Branch line but I don't think it is...someone out there will know) running through the field!

I included an image of that too, incorrectly labelled and all!

* Please note, just found out that the Newburgh zip is too large, I'll have to upload at a later date when I have found a way to make it smaller.

Track bed.
 

That was the colliery railway which ran from Broomhill through Radcliffe to Amble, it was joined at two places by lines from Newburgh and Hauxley collieries along it's length.

The two fields in question and the one immediately across the road were never opencasted. Rumour has it that at the south east corner of the field to the left of the road there was a drift uncovered headed north towards and under the farm. In addition the drag line uncovered three full tubs of coal near the surface on the drift incline. Anyone confirm this and the drift in question?

Is it the East Togston Drift? we mentioned it in this post:

http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/ambl...6&postcount=23

1954 map:

It probably is, I had a chat with the engineer who kindly let us look at the Radcliffe mine plans this afternoon. The opencast lads had the coal but he thinks the tubs may still be down there as it was under the field which was not dug up when they went down the incline and found them. He is also making an attempt at tracking down the opencast survey photos mentioned in another thread as well.
Excuse the pun! but he is a mine of information, telling me about the dragline uncovering the drift at Chevington at the outset and going down the steps into the first area below the surface, elf and safety would not like that sort of thing now!

Interesting to see a few fields left intact!

Here's the disused Newburgh Colliery from that 1954 map. There was a short terrace of houses there too - "Sea View" - looks like four houses on that map.

East Togston Drift
 

Coquet, you are correct as above with your cross referance to another map.
The drift is East Togston which I used to walk down when I worked as a timber laddie in the Prince seam. Williamtheyounger will also confirm this as he visited his father many times who worked on the rolley way landing at the drift. When in the foreshift my week could only start at midnight because I was under twentyone years old. (Not allowed, by law, to work on a sunday. The World has changed a lot since then.);)
Just as an aside, I often heard a story that a butchers cart drifted off the track to Coldrife Farm during snow and was swallowed up when it fell into old workings. I was hoping that the story would be confirmed by opencast work but have just learned that those fields were left untouched. If true they will still be down there, but also, could just be another story to go unproven.

I heard the story of the horse and cart about 30 years ago from the farmer at Low Hall, I understood it to be in the opencast area just south of the new beach road nearer to where Coldrife was. I will ask if Joe still remembers next time I see him.

Now I find out, the butcher was my uncle Jimmy Rowell and his horse and cart!!

Re; Jimmy Rowell
 

The incident must have happened sometime in the 30's. You appear to come from an unlucky family. Was this not the house at North Togston that a plane crashed onto during WW2? Andy, (Second name not known) was the butcher to my family at North Broomhill. He worked for Rowell's of Amble whose house recieved the direct hit, and did his rounds by horse and cart. Andy only had one eye which he recieved, according to my mother, when the aircraft accident happened. Was he listed as one of the injured?
The above is only hearsay as I have nothing to back her story at all.

It was the Robson family who lost their 5 children at North Togston in an accident which is well documented elsewhere. The confusion arises in your recollection possibly because Jimmy Rowell was downstairs in the house that night, he rescued the tail gunner, the only crewman to survive from the Stirling bomber.I have not come across an Andy being involved in any way in what happened though.

The uncanny coincidence is that Will and Norah Robson were my mum's aunty and uncle, Jimmy Rowell my father's uncle, my paremts being 3 and 4 at the time! so yes an unlucky chapter.

Butcher Andy.
 

This was Andy Moffatt who worked for Jimmy Rowell and also for the Amble Co-oP later on. I don't know how he lost his eye but it may have been during the war as he was one of the original commandos who trained in Scotland prior to operations abroad. He was a big man and ended his days living at Low Hall ( Laa Haa) farm near Amble. He liked a game of bingo at the Bede Street Club.

re: Rowell Family etc
 

Many thanks Hollydog and Alan J for correcting my assumptions. Keep up the good work.

hi, i lived at seaview newburgh,until sept 64. i was 11yrs when my dad moved to welbeck pit, notts....there was a terrace of 7 houses. no1 the end nearest the pit was the managers house,the maughns lived there,we were at no 5 and percy summers lived at no 7...my dads name was alex baptist

Hi Newburgh, welcome to the forum, I don't think there will be many about who can say they lived there!
Any memories, photos etc - this is the place

thanks hollydog,yes lots of good memories,only two bad ones,,,the day my cousin jimmy guy drown along the beach at chevington,i was eight at the time and the day we had to move from newburgh...i think my sisters got a couple of pics of when we were at newburgh will investigate.we all lived pretty close in those days..amble radcliffe hauxley newburgh the drift red row broomhill etc. and now were all over.

the Robson children are remembered by having streets named after them (Robsons Way, last estate leaving Amble on route to Togston)
God Bless

always wondered where Newburgh was, cheers

Hi there i remember the drownings at Druridge bay ,2 cousins caught out by the tide.Was in the same class at school with Jims brother Brian

Lukes pond
 

As a young child i can remember a pond at the base of newburgh pit heap that my granfather told me someone called luke had drowned in was this a tale he told me . Has anybody else heared the tale .as a young child he would take my brother & i to the top of the shaft & we would drop stones down health & safety would have a field day .we used to walk the old disused railway line from radcliffe to newburgh to the beach o happy days if only i could turn the clock back

not sure about which pond you mean?what i called the pond was the water at the bottom of the hill between newburgh and bondicarr farm,,the burn flowed into it from the west and underground onto the beach...the only other thing i can think of is there was reservoir by the pit but i never heard of anyone drowning there.

Sad day....me and Brian served in the army in 70s,both went to canada on postings and he ended up staying there.

I remember Old Luke's Pond. It was a small pond in the corner of a field near the road. My parents told me it was so called because Old Luke "did away with himself" there. This was before my time. I've marked the position of the pond on this old sketch map. I may not have it exactly right but it was certainly somewhere in that vicinity. Hope the scale of the map is large enough. http://http://www.coquetandcoast.co....php?albumid=10

Sorry, failed to post picture. I'll try again.
http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/ambl...0&pictureid=90

Regarding the horse and the mine workings - from Bedlingtonshire Revisited, June 2005 - © Sixth Townships Community History Group

Those Were The Days

Horse Buried Alive

A butcher from Amble, Adam Goodfellow, travelling with his horse and cart along a track through the fields at High Coldrife Farm, near Broomhill, was shocked when the horse began to sink in the ground during a Friday evening in January 1931. Adam who was accompanied by a boy, Andrew Moffatt sprang into action to try and save the animal with help of a housekeeper, Maud Taylor, who had seen the incident. The cart was pulled clear, but unfortunately the horse, which was struggling violently, sank deeper. Frantic efforts continued to try and haul the horse out but these all failed. An attempt was made to get the animal from underneath. Three miners who were working in a seam 30 feet below the ground, saw the horse, and one of them Mr. W. Summers, walked round to get into a good position to free it. He himself was cut off by a fall of stone and earth, and had to be hauled out to the surface by means of ropes and ladders. The other two miners who made the attempt were, Mr. J. T. Nesbit and Mr. W. Wade. The workers on the surface were unable to make headway owing to the continual crumbling of earth which kept falling back and making their work dangerous. The horse slipped deeper and deeper into the main workings and earth and coal continued to fall onto the animal until it totally disappeared from sight. Although there was extreme danger, the miners kept up their efforts to save the horse’s life until the early hours of Saturday morning. About 3. 00 am in the morning they came to the conclusion that the horse was dead, but kept toiling on until they reached the animal’s carcase. The fall where the tragedy took place, was about one mile from Broomhill Colliery and riddled with previous pitfalls.

Well that is quite astonishing! Nice find by the way. [And nice drawing Digvul]

Digvul
I have it confirmed by someone who lived nearby that your location of Luke's pond is certainly correct.

Another aside, I 've come across the newspaper report for the incident with the butcher's cart:
Hatlepool Mail, 24 January 1931:
"A horse was plunged 30 feet into pit workings when a portion of the roadway suddenly caved in at High Coldrife, near Broomhill Colliery, yesterday afternoon.
Parties of miners worked for hours with pulleys in an effort to haul the animal to the surface, but at a late hour last night it was still trapped underground.
The horse was being led by Adam Goodfellow, in the employ of Mr James Rowell, butcher, of Amble, on his rounds when suddenly it seemed to shy and its hindquarters began to disappear into the ground.
Goodfellow saw that a hole about 3ft in diameter had appeared in the roadway.
He immediately unharnessed the horse so as to pull it out, but as soon as it was unharnessed the horse fell further down and disappeared out of sight.
The cart was pulled back or it would have followed, as the hole became larger.
The hole was 30 feet deep, and a remarkable feature is that two men working down the pit got past the horse and climbed towards the surface.
One was able to get out at the top, but the other was not so successful, and he had to be pulled to the surface by ropes."