Big machines at Bay's Leap

Photos and captions of the Bay's Leap open cast mining kindly provided by Alan Douglas of Throckley.

Yes, all was peace until one day,
A host of man arrived.
To dig black diamonds from the ground,
They wouldn't be deprived.

Machinery rolled in day by day,
Descending on the farm.
Tractors, scrapers, diggers too,
At first they caused alarm.

The months rolled by and now we see,
The surplus in a heap.
Towering high above the fields,
The death of old Bays Leap.

Above are the last three verses of The Death of Old Bay's Leap by Alan Duggan written in 1958. The rest of his poem, a nostalgic memory of the lost beauty, tranquility and productivity of Bay's Leap Farm at the onset of open cast coal mining, has already appeared on this blog.

Today we look at the other side of the coin. The photographic memories of one of those men who operated the machinery, dug out the coal and, at the end, restored the land back to farming.

In 1957 the National Coal Board bought Bays Leap Farm, Town House and Heddon Mill to commence open cast mining. 70 acres of land was excavated to a depth of 200 feet to extract 2.5 million tons of coal. The land was returned to farming in 1965.

The London Gazette, 25th September 1964, p.8132

The Durham Mining Museum website provides the following information. The site was operated in the 1960s by civil engineering firm, Sir Lindsay Parkinson & Co. Ltd., and its coal resources were estimated in 1961 at 1,355,500 tons. The coal seams worked were Beaumont, Brockwell, Main, Stone, Three Quarter, Top & Bottom Tilley, and Victoria.

The Durham Mining Museum provides a brief history and description of the opencast coal mining industry as published by British Coal Opencast in 1991.

Many thanks to Alan Douglas for providing the photos and captions from that part of his interesting working life he spent extracting the remaining coal reserves from the land of Bay's Leap Farm at Heddon on the Wall.

Open cast coal mining north of Heddon on the Wall village (1961)