Rainton Bridge South, Houghton-le Spring
NZ 332 485; (Gavin Glover, Jennifer Proctor and Alan Telford); evaluation, excavation and standing building recording; 12th June- 7th July 2001 and November 27th- December 20th 2002; RAB 01/02
The corridor of a waggonway associated with the former North Pit of Rainton Colliery was contained within the site. A desk-based assessment had indicated that the waggonway pre-dated 1777. The geophysical survey and evaluation demonstrated that there was a degree of physical survival of the waggonway.
The evaluation comprised six trenches, revealing substantial evidence of industrial activity relating to the North Pit, along with evidence of post-medieval and modern agricultural activity. In addition, the fieldwork involved the clearance and recording of a standing building associated with the North Pit.
Three trenches were investigated as part of the subsequent excavation, targeted on areas identified by the evaluation as having the greatest archaeological potential. Evidence of the waggonway was recorded in all trenches. The results of the excavation support the conclusions reached by the evaluation, perhaps most importantly by confirming that physical preservation of the track was generally poor, with the rails and sleepers largely having been removed. The form of the waggonway revealed by the fieldwork was a double way, diverging to form a four-track system approaching the pithead of North Pit. The double way was presumably constructed to allow the traffic of full waggons to the staithes on the River Wear, whilst allowing empty chaldrons to return, unimpeded, to the pithead. Towards North Pit, the four-track system had a number of alternative interpretations. The provision of four loading
platforms adjacent to the pithead seems excessive, and so the quadruple way may represent a marshalling area adjacent to the pithead, or two of the tracks may continue as a double way to an unidentified shaft to the south, attested in documentary sources.
In the earlier archaeological evaluation, the best preservation of the waggonway occurred where there was the greatest depth of overburden. Again this proved to be the case during the excavation, when features associated with the waggonway were least disturbed in Trench 3. The presence of colliery related deposits sealing the waggonway clearly implies that activity at the colliery continued in some form after the abandonment of the waggonway system. Map evidence from the mid 19th century identifies an embankment leading away from Rainton North Pit to the south-east, although whether or not this battery formed part of the original waggonway system is unknown. However, it should be noted that continued operation of the pit after the abandonment of the waggonway could suggest that the original waggonway was superseded by a later, embanked, way, for which evidence does not survive.
|
