Killingworth - Killingworth Colliery

Killingworth Colliery

Killingworth was home to a number of pits including the world-famous Killingworth Colliery. It was here in 1814 that George Stephenson, enginewright at the colliery, built his first locomotive Blücher with the help and encouragement of his manager at Killingworth, Nicholas Wood, in the colliery workshop behind his house "Dial Cottage" on Lime Road. This locomotive could haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive; its traction depended only on the contact between its flanged wheels and the rail. It was used to tow wagons of coal along the wagonway from Killingworth to the Wallsend coal staithes. Although Blücher did not survive long it provided Stephenson with the knowledge and experience to build better locomotives at Killingworth. Later he would build the famous Rocket in his locomotive works in Newcastle.

At the same time Stephenson was also developing his own version of the miner's safety lamp, which he demonstrated underground in Killingworth pit a month before Sir Humphry Davy presented his design to the Royal Society in London in 1815. Known as the Geordie lamp it was to be widely used in the North-east in place of the Davy lamp.