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Some members might be familiar
with the small town of Amble in Northumberland. It is a coastal
settlement perched between the industrial south east of the county
and picturesque north Northumberland. The houses at its core are
solid stone built terraces. It is edged with satellite small housing
estates and a caravan park. It has an attractive harbour and
beaches, a thriving marina and glorious views out to sea and up the
River Coquet to its glamorous neighbour, Warkworth.
View of Warkworth from Amble Marina
However, Amble suffers from
post industrial decline and is struggling to create a new identity
for itself. The harbour is no longer a centre for coal export and
the staiths and railways that converged on it are long gone but it
does continue as a fishing port. There is a small industrial estate
on its southern edge that has lost its largest businesses. The
main shopping street, Queen Street, once a thriving and bustling
centre for the area is reshaping and rebuilding itself, trying to
fill the gaps left by a Cooperative Society that once dominated.
In 1840 the picture was very different. As
an example, take this advertisement from the Newcastle Courant of 1
May, offering building sites for sale:
“The extensive improvements which are now in
progress at Amble, the wide and valuable coal field by which it is
surrounded, and the erection of a most convenient harbour, indicate
the rapid rise of Amble into a large and flourishing seat of
commerce, and insure for its purchaser an ample and safe investment
for his capital.”
In 1831, Amble Township had a population of less than 250 people.
Ten years later the population had almost trebled to over 700. By
1851 there were in excess of 1000 inhabitants. There were no street
names in the 1841 census, inhabitants lived in “Amble” or on one of
the surrounding farms. The local church and shops were in nearby
Warkworth, about a mile and a half away. In 1831 Amble’s inhabitants
were mostly agricultural labourers and fishermen, with a small
number of coal miners. Salt extraction had been going on for
centuries. In the parish registers it was unusual to have more than
a couple of baptisms a year from Amble. Yet by 1841 the speculators
had moved in and there were disputes over rights of way,
bankruptcies, Irish navvies, Scottish joiners and masons, beer
shops, drinking and brawling. Save for the rule of law and order,
Amble would not have looked out of place in the Wild West.
The clue to Amble’s rapid change is found in the aforementioned
Newcastle Courant advertisement; coal, railways and a deep water
harbour.
Coal had been extracted for
generations in Amble and nearby Hauxley, it is mentioned as early as
1608. Most of the land surrounding Amble had been in the hands of
the Radcliffe family (Earls of Derwentwater) but, following the
Jacobite Rebellions and their attainder for treason, the land passed
to the Crown. The land was eventually returned to a descendant of
the family, the Countess of Newburgh. Over the years, sales of land
in the district, primarily belonging to this family, had referred to
the possibility of coal underground and the seller often retained
the interest in that coal. As the speculators moved in and took
leases on the land for coal extraction, from the Countess and
others, they assumed the right to dig for it even on land not
directly leased by them, on the basis of the wording of the original
deeds. The newspapers started reporting court cases for compensation
by landowners and farmers suffering from the speculators digging on,
or running railway lines across, their land.
The Industrial Revolution meant a big
expansion in the extraction of coal to drive the new industries. The
Amble area, with a potential for export by sea, represented an ideal
opportunity. Some coal had already been exported from the district
through a more modest Amble harbour, a staith having been built in
1826. However, it was not until the 1830s that commercial
exploitation really took off.
Two projects went forward in tandem,
backed by two entrepreneurs, Robert Arthur F Kingscote of
Gloucestershire and Thomas Browne, a solicitor of London. A bill was
put before Parliament, enacted in 1837, as the Warkworth Harbour and
Dock Act, the purpose of which was to improve the mouth of the River
Coquet and to create a harbour. At the beginning of the same year
the two gentlemen acquired a 42 year lease to extract coal from the
Countess of Newburgh’s lands at Amble, Hauxley and Togston. The
Radcliffe Coal Company was created, with full powers for working
coal mines, rights of wayleave and erecting staiths. The intention
was to offer 18 shares in the company each worth £4000, the two
prime movers retaining 3 of the 18 shares between them. Miners’
cottages were built to house the pitmen near the pithead at
Radcliffe. The pair also agreed to provide the money to the
Warkworth Harbour Commissioners to complete the building of the
harbour. (Kingscote and Browne were also Commissioners).
The development of the harbour was a major
undertaking. The aim was to construct two stone piers, or
breakwaters, in order to confine the entrance to the harbour and to
straighten and deepen the river. Prior to this containment of the
River Coquet, it had gradually been moving south. Quays and shipping
berths were also to be built. The clerk of the works built a
substantial property overlooking the project, called Cliff House,
which was also the Tommy Shop for the labourers. A sandstone quarry
was being worked to the south of the house. Cliff House still stands
today.
Cliff House
The harbour was certified complete in 1849, at a cost of £120,000
for the two stone piers. The north pier alone had cost £100,000, in
part due to storm damage during construction. Unfortunately, the
north pier had been built of sandstone and was unable to bear the
battering from the North Sea. The sandstone was ultimately replaced
with granite.
1849 was a landmark year for the harbour in more
ways than one. A branch of the Newcastle to Berwick Railway was
opened which ran right to the harbour via Broomhill and Radcliffe
collieries. The Warkworth Harbour Dock Company Act was passed in
1851 allowing staiths to be built at the harbour and, by 1854, most
of the Radcliffe and Broomhill coal was being transported direct
from pithead to ship.
Amble Quay and Staiths
The infrastructure of Amble in the
late 1830s and early 1840s was incapable of coping with the influx
of workmen employed on the harbour works. Amble had sustained a
small, mainly agricultural based, community and although some
labourers managed to find lodgings in the village, others had to
make do with a much more basic existence. The Northern Catholic
Calendar noted that, in 1840, the work beginning on the harbour had
attracted a considerable number of Irish labourers, most of who were
lodged in temporary wooden huts.
Throughout the 1840s there were numerous
advertisements offering building land for sale in Amble. The sellers
were targeting building societies, joiners and masons, encouraging
block purchases at discount rates. Existing buildings with gardens
were also being offered up for auction. Everybody was out to make
their fortune.
The 1851 census of Amble produced a
very different picture of the Township to that of 1841. There were
actual street names and although the population still consisted in
part of agricultural labourers, it was now principally made up of
tradesmen, shopkeepers, quarrymen, platelayers, mariners, ship
builders, ship wrights and ship carpenters.
1861 provided an insight into the growth of
coal exports from the harbour, with coal trimmers and coal teamers
making an appearance. The growth of the port was also reflected in
the appointment of Customs officers and coastguards. In the
1881 census there were 24 vessels listed at Amble, with ships and
crews from Scotland, Kent, Denmark, Holland and Germany.
Amble continued to thrive, relying on its
coal. The Postmaster General had been pleased to agree to the
establishment of a post office in 1843. The Newcastle Journal noted
in an article on 22 February 1845 that “the towns of Amble and
Warkworth, which are rapidly rising in importance, are now lighted
with gas from coal obtained in the neighbourhood.” By 1870, the
Church of England had built a parish church, although the non
conformists had been active in Amble for a long time. In 1874 the
North Eastern Banking Company acquired a freehold site in order to
erect substantial bank buildings. 1876 was another landmark year
with the adoption of a scheme to provide mains sewerage and drainage
for the town. The same year saw an announcement from the North
Eastern Railway Company that they would open a branch railway for
passenger and goods traffic.
The Newcastle Courant of 26 December 1876
captured all this development in an article entitled “Progress at
Amble.” It first of all describes the historical highlights of the
town, going back to 1188, and suggests that, historically, there was
little evidence for Amble ever becoming an important place. It then
goes on to say:
“There
is reason to believe, however, that it will now continue to grow.
Not only have the directors of the North Eastern Railway yielded to
the request of the inhabitants and conceded them a branch for
passengers, but the station for it is already in course of erection.
The foundations of a large hotel are also now laid. The namers of
the rapidly forming streets having loyally called the first Queen
Street, and decorously termed the next Church Street and Cross
Street, have now turned their attention to the poets, and have named
the last one Byron Street. The system of sewerage undertaken by the
Rural Sanitary Authority has also been rapidly carried on and is now
nearly completed. A cemetery is also proposed. At the present time
burials are made at Warkworth. The road between Amble and Warkworth
lies along the edge of the River Coquet, and at high tides is
overflowed in some places, and a cemetery will, therefore, be
another improvement.”
An Amble street with a vacant
building lot on the right
So what brought about the decline of
Amble in the 20th Century? The very same things that had
made it boom in the 19th. Coal exports from the harbour
reached their peak in 1930 and thereafter started to decline. The
collieries producing the coal became uneconomic and closed;
Radcliffe in 1896, Broomhill in 1961 and Hauxley in 1966. The miners
moved to other local pits at Shilbottle and Ellington, or migrated
to the South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire coalfields.
Attempts were made to find alternative exports
for the harbour but in reality the river was never deep enough,
despite dredging, to take boats of sufficient size. The railway
station closed to passengers in 1930. The final demise for the
railway came in 1969 with the cessation of the transportation of
goods and coal by rail. The railway tracks and staiths were
dismantled. The harbour contracted to, primarily, a fishing port.
Coal extraction continued with the expansion of
opencast mining which rolled across the purpose built pit villages.
Radcliffe residents and their war memorial were moved into a new
housing estate on the edge of Amble. The national pit strike in 1972
saw the miners form their blockade among the ruins of Radcliffe’s
streets to prevent the movement of the opencast lorries. At least
the partially demolished houses provided shelter, and plenty of
timber to keep the pickets’ fires roaring in the cold January that
saw the start of the first national strike since 1926.
Thanks to the Victorian pioneers and the building of
their substantial and solid town, opencast mining has not been able
to obliterate Amble in order to extract the coal that still lies
underneath.
© Janet Rice 2012, all rights reserved.
(Originally published in the Autumn 2012 edition of the
NDFHS Journal)
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