Northumberland and Durham Coalfield

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The Northumberland and Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in North East England, otherwise known as the Durham and Northumberland Coalfield or the Great Northern Coalfield. It consists of the Northumberland Coalfield and the Durham Coalfield.


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The Durham Miners' Gala is a large annual gathering and labour festival held on the second Saturday in July in the city of Durham, England. It is associated with the coal mining heritage of the Durham Coalfield, which stretched throughout the traditional County of Durham. It is also locally called "The Big Meeting" or "Durham Big Meeting". In the context of the Durham Miners' Gala, "gala" is usually pronounced rather than the more common pronunciation.

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James Joicey, 1st Baron Joicey JP DL was an English industrialist, politician, and aristocrat known primarily for being a coal mining magnate from Durham and a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP).

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Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1972, coal mining quickly collapsed and had practically disappeared by the 21st century. The consumption of coal – mostly for electricity – fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to 18 million tonnes in 2016, of which 77% was imported from Colombia, Russia, and the United States. Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, and to 2,000 in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Durham Coalfield</span>

The Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Northumberland Coalfield to its north. It extends from Bishop Auckland in the south to the boundary with the county of Northumberland along the River Tyne in the north, beyond which is the Northumberland Coalfield.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northumberland Coalfield</span>

The Northumberland Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Durham Coalfield to its south. It extends from Shilbottle in the north to the boundary with County Durham along the River Tyne in the south, beyond which is the Durham Coalfield.

The Midgeholme Coalfield is a coalfield in Midgeholme, on the border of Cumbria with Northumberland in northern England. It is the largest of a series of small coalfields along the south side of the Tyne Valley and which are intermediate between the Northumberland and Durham Coalfields to the east and the Cumberland Coalfield to the west. Like the other small coalfields to its east, this small outlier of the Coal Measures at Midgeholme occurs on the Stublick-Ninety Fathom Fault System, a zone of faults defining the northern edge of the Alston Block otherwise known as the North Pennines. It is recorded that coal was being mined at Midgeholme in the early seventeenth century. In the 1830s coal trains were being hauled from Midgeholme Colliery along the Brampton Railway by Stephenson's Rocket. The early workings have left a legacy of spoil heaps, bell pits, shafts and adits. There is no current coal production. However in January 2014, Northumberland County Council gave planning permission for the open-cast extraction of 37,000 tonnes of coal at Halton Lea Gate. This may open the way for other applications to mine the coalfield. In 1990 a proposal to mine reserves of 60,000 tonnes of good-quality coal at Lambley, Northumberland was rejected, but the prospect for a successful application has now changed, since the Planning Inspector allowed the development to proceed at Halton Lea Gate on appeal.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northumberland Miners' Association</span>

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Durham/Northumberland 2 is an English Rugby Union league at the eighth tier of the domestic competition for teams from North East England. The champions and runner-up and promoted to Durham/Northumberland 1 and the bottom two clubs are relegated to Durham/Northumberland 3. Each season two teams from Durham/Northumberland 2 are picked to take part in the RFU Senior Vase - one affiliated with the Durham County RFU, the other with the Northumberland RFU. Ponteland won their fourth title in 2020 with Sunderland also promoted.

Durham/Northumberland 3 is an English Rugby Union league at the ninth tier of the domestic competition and is currently the basement league of club rugby in North East England. Any club in the north east wishing to join the rugby union club hierarchy must begin at the bottom so all new teams from the north east start in this division - although until 2005-06 there was relegation to the now defunct Durham/Northumberland 4. The champions and runner-up and promoted to Durham/Northumberland 2.

A National Character Area (NCA) is a natural subdivision of England based on a combination of landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity and economic activity. There are 159 National Character Areas and they follow natural, rather than administrative, boundaries. They are defined by Natural England, the UK government's advisors on the natural environment.

The geology of Northumberland in northeast England includes a mix of sedimentary, intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks from the Palaeozoic and Cenozoic eras. Devonian age volcanic rocks and a granite pluton form the Cheviot massif. The geology of the rest of the county is characterised largely by a thick sequence of sedimentary rocks of Carboniferous age. These are intruded by both Permian and Palaeogene dykes and sills and the whole is overlain by unconsolidated sediments from the last ice age and the post-glacial period. The Whin Sill makes a significant impact on Northumberland's character and the former working of the Northumberland Coalfield significantly influenced the development of the county's economy. The county's geology contributes to a series of significant landscape features around which the Northumberland National Park was designated.

The Northumberland Rugby Union is the governing body for rugby union in the historic county of Northumberland, England and one of the constituent bodies of the national Rugby Football Union having been formed in 1880. In addition, the county has won the county championship on two occasions, and finished runners-up on a further five occasions.

The Durham Colliery Mechanics' Association was a trade union representing mechanics working at coal mines in County Durham, in England.