Shotton Colliery

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

There are two villages in the parish of Shotton. Old Shotton is a small village to the south east of the main village and is now merged into the town of Peterlee.

Old Shotton can be traced back as far as 900AD when it was known as Scitton. By the 1500s it had become Shotton and was part of Easington, and under the control of the Prince Bishops.

In 1756 the Brandling's built Shotton Hall but through marriage this eventually passed to the Burdon family.

In 1840 the Haswell Coal Company began to sink a colliery to the west of Old Shotton near to Shotton Grange Farm and this pit was "won" the following year.

The village of Shotton Colliery soon started to develop and in traditional pit village style cheap, poor quality housing was erected for the miner. As with all other pit housing, this was not provided out of kindness, it was only there to provide a ready supply of staff for the colliery and to keep them close to their place of work so they would be on time and work long hours.

The pit was prosperous at first but on the 3rd of November 1877 the pit was closed and stayed closed until 1900. People left the village in search of work at other pits in the area. When the pit reopened it grew rapidly. More housing was built and the village grew with the pit. Other industries in the village included the Coke Works and the Brick works.

By 1947 the original houses to the east of the railway line were at the end of their useful life and in the end most of the bottom end of Front Street was knocked down.

In 1972 the final blow to the village came. The N.C.B announced that it was closing the colliery with the loss of 800 jobs. Easington District Council built new housing in the 70's , pulling down most of the remaining pit houses to do so in an attempt to tidy up the village. Through out most of the 70's work was done to remove the pit heap which was at one time the largest pit heap in the country. The Brick works and Coke works went with the pit.

There is almost no work in the village now. On the site of the colliery there are a few small industrial units but the main source of employment in the area now seems the call centres which have sprung up to the east of the village cutting Shotton Colliery and Old Shotton in half.

The only thing left in the village now to remind you of the time before the colliery is Grange Farm. Some of its buildings remain and now over look fields once more a bit like they did in the 1840...except now in 2006 the field has a small air-strip in it with a parachute club!