Shotton Colliery

Shotton Colliery is a village in County Durham, England, situated west of Peterlee.

This article is about village in County Durham. For mine in Northumberland, see Shotton Surface Mine.

Shotton Colliery

Memorial Pit Wheel, Shotton Colliery.
Shotton Colliery
Location within County Durham
OS grid referenceNZ3908240712
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
PoliceDurham
FireCounty Durham and Darlington
AmbulanceNorth East

The two villages in the parish of Shotton are Old Shotton, a small village southeast of the main village, now merged into the town of Peterlee.

History

Old Shotton can be traced back as far as 900 AD, when it was known as Scitton, which in Old English means 'of the Scots', The village name [1] was first recorded in 1165 as 'Sottun'. By the 16th century, when Easington was under the control of Prince Bishops, the village had become known as Shotton.

In 1756, the Brandlings built Shotton Hall and through marriage this eventually passed to the Burdon family.

The Colliery

In 1833, the Haswell Coal Company began to sink a colliery to the west of Old Shotton, near Shotton Grange Farm. This pit began producing coal the following year and the village of Shotton Colliery soon started to develop.

The pit was initially prosperous, but closed on November 3, 1877, causing people to leave the village to work at other pits in the area. In 1900, the pit reopened and grew rapidly, leading to an increased population in the village. More housing was built, making other industries, including the Coke Works and the Brick Works, less popular.

By 1947, the original houses, east of the railway line were in disrepair. Most of the bottom of Front Street was demolished.

In 1972, the National Coal Board announced that it was closing the colliery, at a cost of 800 jobs. Easington District Council built new housing in the 1970s, pulling down most of the remaining pit houses in an attempt to improve the village. Throughout most of the 1970s, work was done to remove the pit heap, which was at one time the largest in the country. The Brick Works and Coke Works went with the pit.

The only pit building left is now used as a second hand car show room. The remains of the pit baths remain semi-derelict.

Present-day

The village is now almost empty of work. On the colliery site a few small industrial units survive, but the main sources of employment are call centres which opened east of the village, dividing Shotton Colliery and Old Shotton.

Most of the parish's pubs, cinemas and the railway station are demolished or converted to other uses. A small number of shops are left.

Some of the buildings at Grange Farm remain and now overlook fields as they did in the 1840s, one of which hosts a small airstrip.

Notable residents

Lonsdale belt winner Maurice Cullen lived in Shotton Colliery where a sculpture in memory of his life and achievements has recently been erected.

gollark: Download them in advance, I mean, if I actually needed to use Windows.
gollark: If I particularly wanted to I could just download multiple ISOs and select which one to use when necessary.
gollark: I can just use my phone for that, there are a bunch of apps to allow your (rooted, Android) phone to act as a USB mass storage device.
gollark: Alternatively, it's a test to see whether they'll be able to get away with using it to push advertising.
gollark: My guess: some developer wanted to test their push notification server or something, but accidentally used the *production* one and not the development one.

References
  1. "Site Details". Keystothepast.info. Retrieved 10 November 2013.

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