A coal mine, called Doctor Pit, is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1865. The pit was sunk in 1854. The site included a brickworks site that was worked from 1937 to 1970.

NEHL - Bedlington's Doctor Pit came to be the dominant feature of the town landscape. It sat just beyond the Front Street and market square from 1855, and accelerated the development of the settlement into one of Northumberland's largest pit villages. Housing in the village was constructed fairly early on at Bell's Place, but later spilled east of Choppington Road by the 1890s with the development of Shiney Road, Doctor Terrace, Telephone Row, Cross Row and New South Row.

The colliery itself was connected to the much older A Pit, opened 1838, by waggonway. This is now part of the Doctor Pit park. From its outset it featured a complex of sidings, a secondary ventilation shaft, an onsite smithy and a small reservoir where water was likely pumped into. By the 1890s this reservoir was rebuilt north of the site, which also included a gas works and extended ancillary buildings. The waggonway remained single track to Bedlington Station.

It remained owned by Bedlington Coal Co. until nationalisation in 1947. They owned a string of pits in these parts, and at its peak Doctor Pit along employed over 1200 people.

The site is now a park on the edge of Bedlington's housing settlements, and is a pleasant walk through to the station soon to be back in use.