page_title: Marley Hill
section_title: Old Marley Hill, collieries, railways and associated industry
hierarchical_section_title: Marley Hill / Old Marley Hill, collieries, railways and associated industry
caption_attribution_description: English: Discarded ventilation duct on the former site of Marley Hill Colliery.
context_page_description: Marley Hill is a former colliery village about six miles to the south west of Gateshead, near the border between Tyne and Wear and County Durham. It has been part of the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead since 1974. Prior to this it was part of Whickham Urban District. It lies within the Whickham South & Sunniside electoral ward of the Blaydon parliamentary constituency.
  Neighbouring towns and villages include Burnopfield; Sunniside, Gateshead; Byermoor. Marley Hill, Sunniside, Burnopfield and Byermoor all share Whickham's "NE16" postcode prefix, despite Burnopfield sitting just over the border in County Durham. The actual area considered to be Marley Hill for postal purposes etc. is actually much larger than it would first appear, as there were originally more houses to the south and south east, nearer the colliery. Birkheads Cottages and Hedley Hall Farm are the farthest properties away from the village itself, these being about a mile to the south-east. Hedley Hall Farm's address is anomalously listed as "Hedley Lane, Sunniside", despite actually being further away from Sunniside than Birkheads Cottages, whose addresses read "Birkheads Lane, Marley Hill".
context_section_description: Marley Hill Colliery and the adjoining coke works were situated in the area known as Old Marley Hill, further along St. Cuthbert's Road (which is closed to vehicles beyond a large metal gate just past St. Cuthbert's Park), and at one time most of the village, including houses, a shop, the original post office and two Chapels (Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist, the latter being situated at the end of one of the rows of colliery houses, reputedly earning it the nickname "Ranter's Row") was centred around the colliery itself. There was also a row of very basic houses which was originally called Fen House Row, after a large house which stood in the field behind them, but came to be known simply as "The Hole" or "The Valley." Heading towards the pit, these were on the right hand side of St. Cuthbert's road, just beyond the gate. The houses backed onto the steep hillside along the pit road, and some of them were flattened by a landslide around the turn of the 20th century. The rest were demolished in 1920. There were also three terraces nearer the A6076 which runs from Sunniside to Stanley; Bowes Terrace, Gibraltar Row, and Marley Hill Terrace. These were known collectively as Andrews Houses. Bowes terrace is visible on the 1938 OS map, but appears to have been demolished by 1951. Gibraltar Row and Marley Hill terrace last appear on the 1966 map but some of the houses were certainly still extant as late as 1973, albeit in a derelict condition, as they appear in the background of a photograph taken that year.
   
  
  Bowes Bridge MPD (a sub-shed of Gateshead MPD) on the North Eastern Railway's Tanfield Branch was also in this area, and the disused Turntable pit and coaling stage for the locomotives are still extant alongside the Tanfield Railway, whose car park now occupies the site of Gibraltar Row and Marley Hill Terrace. Bowes Terrace occupied the high ground on the opposite side of the Tanfield Branch, overlooking Marley Hill engine shed, (reputed to be the world's oldest working example) which is still in use by the Tanfield Railway for the storage and maintenance of its locomotives. A number of additional buildings have been constructed around the shed in the years since the site became a heritage railway, including sheds for the storage of out-of use locomotives and rolling stock, a shed for the restored carriages used on the passenger services, as well as a number of workshops. The mine tubs from outside the school were restored in the railway's woodwork shop. Marley Hill shed was actually on the Bowes Railway, which crossed the Tanfield Branch on the level beside the signal box and was owned by the National Coal Board after nationalisation in 1947, whereas the Tanfield branch (by this time part of the London & North Eastern Railway) came under the control of British Railways. There are bus stops either side of the road here, which would have originally been used by the occupants of Andrews Houses. These are now used mainly by visitors to the Tanfield Railway, and are served by Go North East routes X30 and X31 from Stanley, except Sundays, when only X31 operates. Both terminate at Newcastle, but X31 follows the same route previously used by the X30, via Lobley Hill and Gateshead, while the X30 now deviates from this at Sunniside, following a similar route to that of the old 706 via Sunniside Road, Whickham Highway and Dunston Bank. 
   The majority of the houses in this area were very basic, and were in an extremely poor condition by the time they were demolished. Some were of a similar design to the houses in the pit village at the nearby Beamish Museum, and others were built as back-to-backs, a type common in Yorkshire (large numbers remain in Leeds), Lancashire and the Midlands but rarely seen in the north-east. The Bowes Railway ran through a cutting east of the signal box, and the Stanley road crossed it on a bridge. After the closure of the line, this bridge was no longer necessary, and the cutting was backfilled, although the western end of it is still visible adjacent to the box, forming the headshunt of the shed yard. 
caption: Discarded ventilation ducting
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