Posted by Stan Howe on 5/29/2005, 10:35 am, in reply to "Locations of Mines around West Auckland" --Previous Message--
195.93.21.2
: My father and uncle used to talk of
: "Brocken Back". Probably
: "Broken Back Colliery which, if
: I remember correctly their
: "crack" was on the Warner
: site at St Helens. They were born
: and brought up in Dent Street at
: Tindale so they would have known.
: St Helens colliery is shown on your
: map on the opposite side of the
: road. Was "Brocken Back"
: a slang name for St Helens Colliery
: or was it different? The Durham
: County Mining Museum web-site hasn't
: this information.
:
:
To the best of my recollection the well-known 'Broken Back' colliery was in the vicinity of Tindale Crescent, about where Elliotts Motors now stands. The slag heap remains behind 'the factories' may well have come from it. As a boy I remember 'the factories' (a clothing and a leather and a button one) being built just after WWII on a site prepared using the red-coloured tailings from that heap. Shortly afterwards one of the factories burnt down at night, providing the village with a rare sight to gawp at!
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