Tuesday 2 August 2011

Growth of a Pit Town (NZ388472)

So many of the North-East’s towns of today began life as tiny hamlets at the dawn of the nineteenth century, only to be transformed as pits were sunk and workers and their families came flooding in.  Utterly typical of this dramatic metamorphosis is that which occurred at Murton, Co.Durham…

Population
1801: 75
1811: 71
1821: 72
1831: 98
First pit sunk 1838
1841: 521
Coalmining begins 1843
1851: 1,387
1861: 2,104
1871: 3,017
1881: 4,710
1891: 5,052
1901: 6,514
Present: c.7,300

Another interesting comparison is the Tithe map of 1777:


... with the present-day layout here (which I can’t reproduce for reasons of copyright).

Astonishing.

And now all the pits, without exception, have gone.

[1777 map taken from www.murtonheritagesociety.co.uk]




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