Elemore Colliery

Elemore Colliery was commenced on May 23rd 1825 by the Hetton Coal Company, but the sinking was complicated by flooding. The first coals were drawn in 1833. In 1853 the Caroline shaft, abandoned 20 years previously during sinking, was reopened. The workmen in these early years lived in houses built of sod at Low Downs, in the midst of which existed a "Fad" where colliery horses were kept. The sinking of the New Pit or Lindsay Shaft started in 1870, the first coals being drawn in March 1874. The Jane and Caroline engine houses were erected in the autumn of 1880, each with a single cylinder vertical winding engine for pumping as well as winding. In December 1895 3 men died from foul air in the colliery. In 1925 the Jane Pit was reopened, followed by the pithead baths in 1930. After the Second World War the George shaft was deepened. The mine closed in 1974 but in 1980 was earmarked for preservation, particularly as the Isabella Winding Engine (1826) stood with its engine still in situ, the only single cylinder vertical engine known to survive thus. Until 1981, when it was destroyed, this was a Scheduled Ancient Monument, one of only two surviving examples of the once-common Durham Colliery vertical winding engine (Beamish being the other). No surface traces survive of the mine buildings or its former railway line, part of the pioneering Hetton Railway which predated the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the use of locomotives. The elegant Frizzell designed baths (HER ref. 5109) are all that remains of the Victorian and Edwardian buildings on the site.