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Old 17-01-2013, 05:20 PM
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Coquet Coquet is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Amble
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hollydog View Post
I am of a later generation and find all this fascinating, a lost history from only 50 or so years ago. This forum is becoming a very valuable resource to record the rich heritage of this area.
As an aside, I was able to have a few hours on a "Marion" in 1982 deep down in the hole just west of the Moorhouse drift. It was very interesting to see a 100 metres of coal seam exposed with rubble from above filling the old mine workings. It was striking how little coal had actually been extracted by the underground mining. Pit props and metal etc were very evident, as was a circular metal shaft further west past Hope House farm.
Wish I had taken more pics now!!

Sounds very interesting. I feel the site operators should be obliged to record a representative selection of what the opencast uncovers for posterity. Just photographs would be better than nothing.

Quote:
Pit props and metal etc were very evident, as was a circular metal shaft further west past Hope House farm.

Could have been a staple shaft. That's a shaft wholly underground between two working levels. We had one at Ellington that had a spiral staircase in it, Although its primary function was storage. That is it had large hydraulically operated metal doors at the bottom that allowed the shaft to be closed and filled from the top with coal (more correctly 'run of mine') during stoppages on the conveyor system.
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