After a kind invitation from Banks Mining I was able to visit their Brenkley Lane surface mine in Northumberland. The impressive site is set to be producing coal until 2020 with an overall output of 2.4 million tones of coal.

The bands of coal visible in the wall of the opencast

Recently workers have uncovered old mine workings and two early metal tubs. Banks have kindly offered the tubs to the museum, which will make an interesting little addition to our colliery area.

One of the early metal tubs discovered in workings, plus a good load of coal

Interestingly, during my visit parts of several old workings were visible; in the picture below the block of coal which can be seen is the side of an underground roadway. The rippled effect, on the surface of the coal, are the marks made by picks used to cut the coal.

The coal, below the machines, with the hand cut face.

A close up of the coal face

It was fascinating to see to very different ways of mining collide in this way. The old and painstaking methods of cutting coal by hand, with hewers moving 5 or 6 tones of coal per day compared to the huge dumper trucks carrying several hundred tones in one load.

The impressive bucket of the bucyrus excavator, a descendant of our own Ruston Bucyrus steam navvy.

An interesting shot showing a collapse in a section of old roadway.

Once the coal has been extracted the painstaking work of returning the land back to its original condition begins. It is not just a simple case of filling in the hole, every thing from rock, subsoil and top soil has to be put back in the correct layer and to the right level.

As can be seen in the shot below Banks are recreating the parkland of Blagdon Hall, which were extensively remodelled  by  Sir Edwin Lutyens. The pond is the end view point of an impressive avenue of trees leading from the Hall itself.

After mining is finished the parkland of Blagdon Estate is restored.