Marley Hill

During very dry weather, the outline of the road becomes clearly visible as a wide strip of lighter coloured grass, running in a westerly direction from the bollards towards Blackamoor Hill.

The field adjacent to the area formerly occupied by the prefabs is now used for cattle grazing, but was at some point used as a rubbish tip, evidence of which can be seen in the form of the old bottles, jars and clay pipes which can sometimes be found poking out of the ground, as well as the presence in the soil of large quantities of ash from coal fires.

The community centre is still referred to as the "choot" (a contraction of institute) by some of the older residents, and the main hall serves as the village's polling station during local and general elections.

The primary school was opened in August 1895 by Sir Charles Palmer, the MP for Jarrow (who had at one time been the manager of the colliery, becoming a partner in 1842), and finally closed over a century later at the beginning of the 2010 Christmas Holidays.

Some were of a similar design to the houses in the pit village[5] at the nearby Beamish Museum,[6] and others were built as back-to-backs, a type common in Yorkshire (large numbers remain in Leeds), Lancashire and the Midlands but rarely seen in the north-east.

After the closure of the line, this bridge was no longer necessary, and the cutting was backfilled, although the western end of it is still visible adjacent to the box, forming the headshunt of the shed yard.

In contrast to those of its neighbours, the surface buildings of this mine (including stables for the pit ponies) survived in a derelict condition for over twenty years, and the partially blocked entrance to the drift itself, (with tub lines emerging from it) was still visible beneath one of them right up until they were finally removed in the early 21st century.

Although the main surface structures are gone, a small hut made from the yellow bricks characteristic of many local colliery buildings stands on the hill overlooking the site of the drift, on the opposite side of Birklands Lane.

In later years, the coal produced at the colliery was removed in diesel-hauled sets of tubs via the Clockburn Drift, which opened in 1952 and connected underground with the Marley Hill workings.

(Ironically, the coal mining industry had been one of the earliest to spot the potential advantages of electricity as a source of power- using it for everything from lighting to pumping to powering locomotives, thereby nurturing the technology that would one day play a significant part in its downfall.)

Although power stations still had an enormous appetite for coal, this could be easily met by the massive undersea mines in the east of the coalfield, as well as the large opencast sites in Northumberland.

Deep mining was (and still is), a dangerous undertaking, and although it was never the scene of a major disaster like that at the nearby Burns Pit, Marley Hill Colliery was no stranger to the accidents which plagued the industry.

In addition to the various fatalities which occurred underground, one man was killed when a boiler exploded, and the proximity of the various railway lines and sidings to the houses (with the shunting of wagons taking place day and night) yielded tragic results on at least two occasions: firstly in 1888, when a four-year-old girl called Elizabeth Langdon was knocked down and killed by a locomotive while walking on the branch that served the original beehive coke ovens which gave Coke Row its name, and again fifty-four years later, when a Mr. John Mitchell was struck by a locomotive while walking home from the colliery at the end of a shift.

The noisy environment of a colliery yard, with the constant rattle of unbraked wagons being shunted could no doubt quite easily mask the sound of a locomotive approaching in the dark.

Even if Mr. Mitchell had heard the locomotive, (and assuming it was in fact dark at the time) it is quite possible that it would have been difficult to pinpoint its exact location on the maze of points and sidings by sound alone.

Although a return to traditional deep mining methods in Marley Hill and the surrounding area is extremely unlikely, substantial reserves of coal remain.

This has already proven to be controversial, with a planning application to extract 480,000 tonnes of coal and 100,000 tonnes of fireclay on an area of farmland at Skon's Park, just north of Burnopfield coming up against strong local objection, particularly from Derwent Residents Against Mining Application (DRAMA), led by Burnopfield resident Eddie Stringer, who were supported by former miner and Labour MP Dave Anderson, several Liberal Democrat councillors and the National Trust.

These objections centred primarily on the potential issues of noise and dust, large numbers of heavy goods vehicles travelling through Marley Hill, Byermoor and Sunniside, as well as the proposed mine's close proximity to the Gibside Estate.

As of July 2011, another application, to mine coal in an area adjacent to Birkland Lane near Hedley Hall Farm (to the south-east of the site of Blackburn Fell Drift) has been submitted to Gateshead Council's planning department.

Although Liberal Democrat councillor Jonathan Wallace immediately voiced concerns, this application has a greater likelihood of being approved than the proposed Skon's Park site, as this area has a much smaller population, does not lie near the Gibside Estate and an opencast mine was operating nearby relatively recently.

The other remaining structure is a curious rendered brick hut with double-walled construction and heavy steel doors, which stands in the middle of a field to the south of St. Cuthbert's Park.

It has evidently been designed to direct the force of any explosion upwards, with its isolated location meaning that the resulting debris would not land on the surrounding houses or colliery buildings.

It is (for unknown reasons) sometimes referred to locally as "the butterfly chambers" and fell out of use some time before the colliery closed, with one former Marley Hill miner recalling playing in it as a child.

The steps leading up to the door of the colliery's office block are still in situ, and Peruvian Lilies can still be found where the flower beds at the front of the building were.

Considerable numbers of Crocosmia and Lupins can also be found growing in the area where the screens and headgear of the coal-drawing shafts once stood, most likely as a result of somebody tipping garden waste.

Almost thirty years after closure, nature has largely reclaimed the site, with an abundance of wildlife having taken up residence, and the area is well known locally for the rich pickings to be had when blackberries are in season.

Fly tipping has also been a problem, with a notable incident occurring on the Tanfield Railway's coal train day in October 1998, when a vast heap of tyres which had been dumped in the gill adjacent to the site of the cokeworks was set alight.

The land is now owned by UK Coal, and a sign by the gate on St. Cuthbert's Road bearing the company's former name (RJB Mining) warns against fly-tipping.

In early 1942 a Hawker Hurricane crashed in poor weather into an orchard across the road from mast, killing its Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, 24 year old Sergeant James D'Arcy Lees Graham.

There was an anti-aircraft battery near High Marley Hill during World War II, and a drift mine which closed in the 1960s, as did the nearby Byermoor Colliery.