Subscribe to my you tube channel for 220+ more coal mine tributes and counting. Ashington Colliery,Northumberland. Sunk in 1867 and sadly closed in 1988. The new village of Ashington sprung up alongside this mine. Over time settlers in the new village would come from the nearby countryside or neighbouring colliery villages as well as from more distant places such as Cornwall and Ireland.
Ashington’s first two streets in the pit village were called Long Row and Cross Row. They were located in what is now the far north western corner of the town close to where the first pit of the colliery was located. Initially Ashington Colliery was linked by rail via the Ashington wagonway to what is now the East Coast Main Line to the west but from 1872 it was more significantly connected to a new branch of the Blyth and Tyne Railway just to the east of the village. This entered the Ashington area from the south and connected the colliery to the docks of the Tyne. In 1988 Ashington Colliery closed, bringing a sad end to the industry that had brought about the town’s very existence. Many of the miners were transferred to the neighbouring Ellington Colliery to the north. Today, the former Ashington colliery site is now the Wansbeck Business Park to the north of Ashington (although the actual river is south of the town) and this has helped to bring some new employment to Ashington . .