Area Profile: Northumberland. N & C No. 3 - Ashington area

Series

Series Name: Mining Review 10th Year

Issue

Issue No.

Date Released

Jul 1957

Stories in this Issue:

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Section Title

Area Profile

Summary

BFI synopsis: The reasons for the increase by over 40% of production in the coal field. HAS over town of Ashington, pan right. Cottages, pan left along street. The main street. Ruins of Newminster Abbey near Morpeth, where the monks first mined coal in 1236. Closer view of ruins. Waves washing up on beach where sea coal is gathered. LS of Warkworth Castle. Berwick, view from south of Tweed to town. Wansbeck river. A colliery. LS over rural scene with colliery in background. CU of calf. Interior of a railway signal box which runs the independently operated railway used by the colliery at Ashington. Railway station at the colliery. Travelling shot along road, on a bridge overhead a train passes. Coal filled wagons pass camera. Production chart showing rise in productivity. Since 1947 productivity has risen by over 40%. A pit wheel. Train passes colliery, possibly Ellington. New mechanical cutting machinery demonstrated in colliery yard. CU of cutters. Commentary states that increased production is due to investment in reconstruction, mechanisation and automation. Sign for Lynemouth Colliery, pit heads seen in background. Automatic winder in use in pit. Automatic winding machinery. Two engineers examine plans. Colliery at Longhirst showing the entrance to the drift mine. The pit wheel at Ashington. The pit yard, miners emerge from the drift mine and walk to camera. Miners going up stairs into a building. Miners cross colliery yard. Entrance to Ashington Technical College. A class in progress. CU of student. HAS, pan left, the training room at Ashington Colliery. Exterior of NCB Northumberland Division No. 3 headquarters. CU of sign for same. MS of Area General Manager, Mr. D. Hindson, who speaks to camera in his office about the increased production and the reasons for it.
NCB Commentary - From the bad old days of mining into the present. This is Ashington, the biggest mining village is the world.
Thirty thousand people live here and most of them depend on mining for their livelihood.
From the bustling centre of 20th century Ashington the story of coal winning in Northumberland goes back to 1236 when the monks of Newminster Abbey, now ruined, picked sea coal from the shore near Blyth.
Much of the output of No. 3 Area still comes from under the waters of the North Sea.
This successful coal winning area spreads its interests wide.
Its collieries extend from the Scottish border in the north to the Wansbeck River in the south.
The names of its pits are the sinews of Northumberland.
The Area is in business as a farmer because under this farming land coal is being won.
The Area runs its own internal railway because men have to be taken to their jobs and because coal has to be taken to the washeries and later to the ports.
What is the success of No. 3?
Since 1947, output has been boosted over forty per cent.
The means to achieve this rise are very much the same as in other key areas up and down the country - reconstruction, mechanisation, a measure of automation, like the new automatic winder at Lynemouth Colliery which winds coal without an engineman having to be in charge.
No. 3 Area knows very well that the need for coal now can over-side the time that a large new pit can take in the making.
Side by side with their major reconstruction schemes, drift mines are probing down fast into unexploited seams.
Here, at Longhirst, a quick return drift will be turning out a thousand tons a day by 1959.
Right at the centre of the are at Ashington Colliery such a drift is being sunk in the colliery yard itself.
At the same time, Ashington, one of the nation’s million ton a year units, is being expanded and reconstructed to keep its place in the top rank of British pits. The spirit of mining is bred into the men of the area.
Improvements, underground and on the surface, make their job a sight easier than it was in the old days.
But No. 3 can still do with more local men of the right calibre. To this end young miners expand their training by attending courses at the County Technical College.
And No. 3 Area has its own training branch to instruct young men in the manifold ckills modern mining demands.
Area General Manager Hindson, who has seen the Area grown in productivity over the last quarter century, sums up the reasons for No. 3’s success:-

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