There’s very very few collieries in the North East which are still materially evident of their former presence. I could probably count on one hand the sites which anyone would know was a pit. Many have been landscaped, redeveloped or simply reclaimed as agriculture. This one on the Chapel House estate is one such which has been remoulded into a public park.

This is the old Walbottle Coronation Pit, named so after the crowning of George IV in 1830. It was these kinds of sites that induced the need for urban sprawl all the way west from Newcastle, as all of this was once fields, farms and country houses. It was an incredibly attractive area to set up an industry - cheap labour, the skilled minds to construct what’s needed like a Newcomen engine or a waggonway, and the river Tyne down the hill.

The owners of this particular pit owned a string of workings at Blucher and Walbottle, employing upwards of 400 people. The coal here was used for all sorts but namely fire clay, which produced the bricks to build the endless rows and factories of the west end.

This was an early closer - gone by the 1880s and hence why we don’t have any photos of it as far as I’m aware. Still, the site remains as does the route of the Waggonway down to the Tyne.