Durham Records Office while closed to the public in 2020, produced the online bicentenary exhibition:
'Adventurers and Pirates' - Hetton Coal Company, 1820
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| Hetton Colliery in the nineteenth century (Artist - Thomas Harrison Hair, source - TWAM) |
This short but extremely interesting resource outlines the difficult, speculative & combative nature of the development of part of the great northern coalfield, leading in 1822 to the adoption of stationary engines & Stephenson's locomotives on the world's first railway designed from the outset to use steam technology.
The Hetton Railway will celebrate its bicentenary in 2022, three years before that of the Stockton & Darlington, & three years before our Tanfield tercentenary, both in 2025.
The website for the Hetton Railway Railway bicentenary contains the wonderful quote about Arthur Mowbray, who "established the Hetton Coal Co by dint, as his former employer & rival later described it, of prowling round the Royal Exchange to raise funds. No love lost there, then.
