NEHL - Carterthorne Colliery was situated on the outskirts of Toft Hill - around a mile south west. It was a drift mine, i.e a horizontal working into the hill, taking in two shafts and all connected by a tramway.

It had opened in the 1860s by Henry Chaytor, the son of Sir William Chaytor of Witton Castle who served as a board member of the Stockton & Darlington, MP for Sunderland, High Sheriff of Durham in 1839 and an extensive landowner in these parts. It appears the management of the pit was ramshackle at best. In 1870 around 40 men and boys were placed in jeopardy as the pit roof had fallen in. The timbers had given way, and the men were only kept alive by a small air court which wasn't completely blocked up. Only a year later a man died when a large mass of stone and debris fell upon him covering him entirely.

By the 1880s the pit was owned by Andrew Mein of Hartford House, Witton le Wear. He was a Tyneside man but had extensive interests at Morley Colliery, Shildon and South Normanton in Derbyshire.

The pit was still fairly modest in size in the 1890s, with one single entrance shaft with a single track tramway inside. There was a loop at the entrance, with a loading area next to the road leading to Evenwood and High Etherley. Its greatest extent was just before closure in the 1920s, with an extensive tramway leading to a coal depot at Wind Mill and West Carterthorne Colliery as well as to the south linking the wider network at Evenwood Station. Their offices were at Hall Farm.

The colliery went into liquidation in 1927.