Radcliffe Colliery Engine House and Chimney

[Coquet]

This photo is supposedly the final standing part of Radcliffe Colliery. I have no idea when this was finally demolished.

What exactly was the purpose of this "engine house"? is it the pumping engine or shaft winding engine? I'm guessing it's more likely this housed a beam pumping engine simply because the large vertical slot in the front would allow a beam to protrude?

This chimney (for a coal furnace powering a steam boiler?) appears to have claimed our first mining related death of the modern mining period (no doubt there will be many unrecorded casualties in the earlier period of more primitive mining)

Anyway, the newspaper “The Northern Liberator” ,Saturday, October 12, 1839 refers:

On Friday the 4th October a mason named George Spraggon, a native of Rothbury, was killed by falling from the top of the engine chimney, now in the course of erection at Radcliffe Colliery, near Warkworth. The workmen ascended to the top of the chimney, on the outside, by means of a tub which is hauled up by pulleys, and the unfortunate man was in the act of stepping from the tub, over the top, to scaffold place in the inside, when he slipped his hold and was precipitated to the ground, a height of nearly 70 feet; he died instantaneously, his head sinking deep into the ground. He was forty-six years of age, and has left a wife and four children. No inquest was held on the body, in consequence of not being able to secure the attendance of a coroner.