Radcliffe, Northumberland
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Radcliffe is a settlement in the county of Northumberland, England. It is located 1km south of the town of Amble.
Radcliffe was a mining community, once home to over 700 people. A colliery was worked here until 1892, when a fault in the seam made coal extraction uneconomical. New pit shafts were sunk nearby, and the colliery became known as Newborough.
By the mid twentieth century, the surviving pits in this area of Northumberland were also becoming uneconomical to run, especially when compared to extraction using opencast mining techniques. In 1965 plans were drawn up to opencast mine the coal seam beneath Radcliffe and Newborough. The aging and somewhat run-down housing stock of the village was demolished in 1971, and the inhabitants re-housed in more modern accommodation in Amble,onto an estate named the Radcliffe estate. Various streets in this town, such as Dandsfield Square, an award winning project when first built[citation needed], are named after the demolished streets of Radcliffe.
As of 2005, opencast mining continues in the surrounding area, but the mining operations at Radcliffe have ceased, and the land returned to agriculture, and turned over to a nature reserve at Hauxley. Little is now visible at the site of the village - a farm and a mechanic's workshop survived the demolition, and several newer homes have been built since along the A1068 Amble to Ashington road.
