WOODHORN MUSEUM

Spent a smashing day down at Woodhorn Museum yesterday. For more than 80 years Woodhorn was a coal mine. Work to sink the first shaft began in 1894 and the first coal was brought to the surface in 1898. At its peak almost 2,000 men worked at the pit and 600,000 tons of coal was produced each year. Production stopped in 1981 but the shafts continued to be used for neighbouring Ashington Colliery until 1986. It was turned into a museum in 1989 and was further redeveloped and opened again in 2006. The site is now recognised as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Yesterday we went to see an exhibition called ‘Brickland’. It showed scale models of famous places around the world made of LEGO bricks.

Heather and Mandy at Brick Land Woodhorn Museum

There were other interesting things to see at the museum most notably was the mine exhibition. Walking along a corridor the exhibition laid out how the mine worked and more importantly how the miners lived in the early days. It was very interesting. One of the facts that I had forgotten about was that it was due to the miners strike in 1945 that the current welfare state and the NHS were formed. Something we all enjoy today but I wonder how many of us appreciate that it was down to the miners all those years ago.

After the pits closed in Ashington some of the miners formed a group called ‘The Ashington Group’, otherwise known as the ‘Pitmen Painters’. We walked round a gallery there and saw some of the paintings from ‘The Permanent Collection’. these are basically a collection of paintings painted by the Pitmen Painters of theirs lives above and below the ground during this time.


It was very fascinating and if your every in the Northumberland area you should definitely make the visit.


One last note n interest was when we were leaving we saw a Red Squirrel coming out of the trees towards the car just at the entrance. I don’t ever remember seeing a Red Squirrel in the wild. I have seen plenty of Grey Squirrels. Unfortunately by the time my wife Heather passed me my camera it had darted back up the tree. It was nice to see it just the same.


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