Whickham

The richest seam on Tyneside

Coal mining at Whickham is documented as far back as 1356, but it was Queen Elizabeth I's Grand Lease of 1582 — a 99-year lease of the Whickham and Gateshead coal mines, extracted from a reluctant Bishop of Durham — that turned the village into one of the most valuable industrial assets in England. Ownership passed to a cartel of wealthy Newcastle merchants, the Hostmen, whose fortunes and civic power were built substantially on Whickham coal shipped down the Tyne to London.

An early railway

Moving that coal required infrastructure years ahead of its time. The Whickham Grand Lease Way, a wooden wagonway built around 1620 to carry coal from Whickham down to the river at Dunston, is described by some historians as the first recorded railway anywhere — a horse-drawn precursor, by nearly two centuries, to the steam railways for which the North East would later become famous.

A village that outlasted its industry

Mining continued at Whickham for almost 600 years, its final colliery, Watergate, closing only in 1964. The scars of that industry have since faded; Gateshead Council has redeveloped the old pit sites, and Whickham today is a green, largely residential hilltop village with sweeping views back down over the Tyne valley it once helped to power.