Tyne and Wear HER(3429): Blaydon Burn, Freehold Pit - Details
3429
Gateshead
Blaydon Burn, Freehold Pit
Blaydon Burn
NZ16SE
Industrial
Coal Mining Site
Colliery
Early Modern
C19
Documentary Evidence
First marked on 1st edition OS of 1858 as a substantial complex of buildings with a shaft and a smithy. The earliest reference to the pit found was in 1852, when a boring was made ‘near Mr Cowen’s water mill proving the Five Quarters Seam in waste in Mr. Cowen’s Freehold Pit’ [VCH 2, 338]. It is not shown on the Tithe Map of 1838, and by 1896 the site is shown overgrown with trees and only the shaft - acting as an air shaft - survived. By 1914 (OS 3) even this had disappeared under the Summerhill Sand Pit.
No coherent surface traces are now visible, not even any visible brick or other structural debitage. The whole site appears to have been worked over by bulldozer.
1745
6327
NZ17456327
<< HER 3429 >> 1st edition Ordnance Survey Map, c.1855, 6 inch scale, Durham, 2
Tyne & Wear HER, Blaydon Burn File