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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Not beyond Seaham and Easington councils to obtain a strip of land no wider than 20 feet to make the connection ?— by Tony Whitehead Rainton and Seaham Railway 1831-1988The PastIn 1813 Sir Henry Vane Tempest of Wynyard, MP for County Durham, died from an apopleptic fit at the age of 42 and left his considerable fortune and his mines at Penshaw and Rainton to his only legitimate child, 13 year old Frances Anne. At a stroke, as it were, she became the second largest exporter of coal from the River Wear with an income of £60,000 per year, a tidy sum now, a fortune then. ‘Rainton Colliery’ was a collective term for several old, shallow pits, some of which had been worked since at least 1650. The coal in the Rainton district is just below the surface and in all probability mining had gone on there for a millenium or two before that.The entire ‘Rainton Royalty’ was owned by the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral and leased to Frances Anne. At the time that she inherited the Rainton complex incorporated six main pits and many small ones covering an area of some 9 square miles. The main pits were the Nicholson’s, Rainton Meadows, the Plain Pit, Woodside, Hunter’s House and Resolution. The smaller pits, some of which were worked directly by Frances Anne and the others leased out to independent operators, included the Quarry Pit, Annabella, the North Pit, The Knott, Old Engine and Pontop Pit. The Rainton and Penshaw collieries were complemented by workshops at Chilton Moor. The coal was pulled by horses from the Rainton pits on a wagonway (which had probably existed since the opening of Rainton Colliery) to the staiths at Penshaw (via Colliery Row, Junction Row and Shiney Row), from which point the
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