Earsdon

A memorial in the churchyard

Earsdon is an old village with a historic parish church, St Alban's, whose churchyard holds a memorial to the men and boys killed in the 1862 New Hartley Colliery disaster nearby — a catastrophe in which a broken beam-engine shaft blocked the pit's single shaft, trapping and killing 204 people, and which led directly to a change in the law requiring every colliery to have at least two means of escape. The village itself retains a quieter, older character than many of its more recently built-up North Tyneside neighbours.