Easington Colliery was situated on the coast in the County of Durham, between the ports of Seaham Harbour to the north-west and West Hartlepool to the south-east.

Although sinking of the colliery commenced in 1899, actual coal extraction did not begin until 1910 because of difficulties encountered in passing through water-bearing strata. For much of its working life, Easington mined coal in seams located approximately four miles under the North Sea.

As with several other places in County Durham, ‘Easington Colliery’ was the name of both the colliery itself and also its adjoining pit village. Although the colliery was demolished following its closure, the village Easington Colliery is extant.

Easington was initially owned by the Easington Coal Company. This company was itself part of the Furness and Gainsford group, comprised of nine colliery companies, which was one of the important combines within the Durham coalfield. Following the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947, Easington became owned and operated by the National Coal Board (NCB).

In 1951, the worst British mining disaster in the second half of the twentieth century befell Easington. On 29 May of that year, an explosion occurred when the picks of a coal-cutting machine operating on a retreating longwall face struck pyrites, causing sparks which ignited a build-up of firedamp. The resulting explosion, propagated by coal dust, spread through 16,000 yards of roadway and brought down 120 yards of roof, causing the deaths of 81 miners. A further two people died in the ensuing rescue operations. The total number of fatalities in this single accident was greater than that for the entire Durham coalfield for period 1911–47.

Easington Colliery in the 1980s (Photograph by Simon Chapman)

Easington was always a fairly large colliery by overall British standards, in terms of the number of miners working there. The maximum size of its workforce was 3,242, a figure which was reached in 1930. Manpower levels remained at over 2,500 for most of the colliery’s working life, only dropping below 2,000 in the late 1980s. As late as 1991, 1,898 miners were still employed at Easington.

During the 1984–5 strike, the return to work by a miner at the hitherto-solid colliery in August 1984 was the trigger for some particularly dramatic and violent confrontations between pickets and police at Easington. Thereafter, a significant and high-profile riot police presence remained based there for the remainder of the strike. A reconstruction of these events was created for the BBC drama Our Friends in the North (1996).

On 7 May 1993, Easington was the last pit in the Durham coalfield to close. The closure of Easington ended coal mining in a region that had been synonymous with the industry for over two hundred years.

The cage from Easington Colliery (Photograph by Roger Muggleton)

Following the pit’s closure, Easington Colliery was used as the setting for the fictional mining village Everington in the film Billy Elliot, which was released in 2000. Since then, the old colliery site itself was demolished and has been redeveloped as a nature reserve, with a children’s play area.

This profile was written towards the beginning of our project, further material about Easington colliery is available at our exhibtion website.