Coordinates: 54°45′43″N 1°23′13″W / 54.76194°N 1.38694°W
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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 southeast of the main village and is now merged into the town of Peterlee.
History
Old Shotton can be traced back as far as 900 AD 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 Brandlings built Shotton Hall but through marriage this eventually passed to the Burdon family.
The colliery
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 and poor quality housing was erected for the miners. 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 '70s, pulling down most of the remaining pit houses in an attempt to tidy up the village. Throughout most of the '70s 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.
Present-day Shotton Colliery
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 to be call centres which have sprung up to the east of the village, cutting Shotton Colliery and Old Shotton in half.
The village has rapidly declined in recent years with numerous business and enterprises going to the wall.
various Pubs and clubs has now closed over the last 15 years, 2 Petrol Filling station have gone with the least prominent now a car sales office.
List of Pubs now gone
Prince Bishops "Re-named the goldmine" The Fleming Hotel (Now demolished), The Throstles Nest, Melrose Arms, The Central (AKA The Buffs)
Brunton's garage along with the Fleming Hotel were demolished in 2008 and the land has become a horrendous eyesore. the Fleming hotel pub was also a listed building and a row has now erupted between the owners and the local authority's and no doubt a legal case will be taken against the last owners who used "gypsies" to demolish the building
The only thing left in the village now to remind one of the time before the colliery is Grange Farm. Some of its buildings remain and now overlook fields once more as they did in the 1840s... except now the field has a small air-strip in it with a parachute club.
Anthony Ashurst also lives there.
Shotton Colliery is the only Colliery / Village , that doesnt have any goalposts , People of all ages cant have a game of footy or practice .
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