| |
Images on this site are copyrighted. The SINE Project and New Opportunities fund allow their use for private, non commercial purposes. No other use or exploitation of these images is permitted without the written permission of the copyright holders. Every endeavour has been made to assign correct copyright
to the images presented on this website. However, if you believe you
have a claim to an image which is used on the site, please contact us
at sine@ncl.ac.uk.
Inclusion of structures on this website does not imply public right
of access.
Landscape view of a screening shed at The Phoenix Pit, Old Etherley Colliery.
(Image from EARLY 19TH CENTURY)
- Notes about the Image:
-
Painted by the local artist Thomas Harrison Hair (1810-1875), sometime between 1828 and 1842, the original work is owned by the Hatton Gallery and normally kept in storage. Hair's work is rare for the time in that it shows pits and colliery machinery as working entities. This sketch illustrates the practice of 'screening' coal. A screen was made up of a number of bars or grates on which the coal was shaken, allowing small coal and dust to fall through and be separated. The baskets in the left foreground were known as coves and were used to haul the coal up the pit shaft. The wheeled wagons in the centre and right, would be filled with the larger grade coal and pulled to a staith where they would be loaded on to boats.
This watercolour is reproduced and discussed in: Glendinning, Douglas, 2000, The Art of Mining: Thomas Hair's Watercolours of the Great Northern Coalfield, Tyne Bridge Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp.24-25.
An etched version of this watercolour can be found in: Hair, T.H., 1969, Sketches of the Coal Mines in Northumberland and Durham (2nd ed.), Frank Graham, Newcastle upon Tyne, p.49.
Structures identified:
- Image details:
-
The Phoenix Pit. Old Etherley -
Thomas Harrison Hair Collection
, Collection Reference Number: HW:027
WATERCOLOURS, SKETCHES
|
Other suggestions / comments welcome
go to the top