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Radcliffe, Northumberland

Use British English from August 2019Villages in Northumberland
Radcliffe geograph.org.uk 500909
Radcliffe geograph.org.uk 500909

Radcliffe is a settlement in the county of Northumberland, England. It is located 1 km south of the town of Amble. Radcliffe was a mining community, once home to over 700 people. A colliery was worked here until 1892, when a fault in the seam, then fire and flooding, made coal extraction uneconomical. New pit shafts were sunk nearby at Newburgh and later at Hauxley, but flooding remained a problem with the pits in this area. Through much of the 19th and early to mid-20th century, the name of the settlement included the word Terrace - "Radcliffe Terrace, Hauxley" giving the erroneous impression that it was part of Hauxley (or another local town); despite this, it was an independent (and somewhat isolated) settlement. The first word can be found spelled with many variations, even relatively recently: Ratliff, Radcliffe, Ratcliffe, Ratcliff, and Radcliff (and possibly others). By the mid-twentieth century, the surviving pits in this area of Northumberland were also becoming uneconomical to run, especially when compared to extraction using opencast mining techniques. The last shift worked underground at Radcliffe was on 2 February 1962. In 1965 plans were drawn up to opencast mine the coal seam beneath Radcliffe and Newbrough. The aging, and somewhat run-down, colliery-owned housing stock of the village was demolished in 1971 to allow for opencast operations. The inhabitants that had not already moved voluntarily to take advantage of better housing, were relocated to Amble, onto an estate named the Radcliffe estate. Various streets in this town, such as Dandsfield Square, an award-winning project when first built , are named after the demolished streets of Radcliffe. As of 2009, opencast mining continues in the area, but the mining operations at Radcliffe have ceased, and the land returned to agriculture, and turned over to a nature reserve at Hauxley. Little is now visible at the site of the village - a farm, a few private houses, a mechanic's workshop, and the old sports pavilion survived the demolition. The workshop was the site of Craiggs' Bus Garage, and has re-opened as a repair workshop specialising in agricultural machinery. The house opposite was the home of Charlie Nyberg, who ran a newsagency and barbershop from there. This house, built circa 1960, replaced the previous house and Post Office, demolished for road widening. At the nature reserve, the footings of some features (paths, picnic area, etc.) are partially made with bricks, some of which show the imprint of Radcliff (many collieries included a brickworks). Some newer homes have also been built along the A1068 Amble to Ashington road. On Sunday, 15 February 1942, at 8:22 pm, a landmine was dropped on Radcliffe by a German aeroplane being chased by an RAF fighter plane. Three houses, a school, and a church were demolished. Three members of the Craiggs' extended family were killed, and several others injured. Casualties would have been much higher if the service in the church had not finished shortly before, and the congregation dispersed. The Radcliffe War Memorial, erected in 1928 for the First World War, and with an additional roll of honour added for the fallen of the Second World War, was removed from Radcliffe and relocated to Amble, opposite the Amble Clock Tower Memorial in the Town Square. The original location can still be seen at the west side of the A1068 to the south of the village, where the surrounding wrought iron railings remain.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Radcliffe, Northumberland (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Radcliffe, Northumberland
A1068,

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Latitude Longitude
N 55.316 ° E -1.584 °
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A1068
NE65 0JB
England, United Kingdom
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Radcliffe geograph.org.uk 500909
Radcliffe geograph.org.uk 500909
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River Coquet
River Coquet

The River Coquet runs through the county of Northumberland, England, discharging into the North Sea on the east coast at Amble. It rises in the Cheviot Hills on the border between England and Scotland, and follows a winding course across the landscape ("Coquetdale"). The upper reaches are bordered by the Otterburn Ranges military training ground, and are crossed by a number of bridges built in the 20th century. It passes a number of small villages and hamlets, and feeds one of the lakes created by extraction of gravel that form the Caistron Nature Reserve, before reaching the town of Rothbury, where it is crossed by a grade II listed bridge. Below the town is Thrum Mill, a Grade II-listed water mill. It loops around Brinkburn Priory, founded in the 1130s for Augustinian Canons, and its associated mill. At Felton it is crossed by two bridges, one dating from the 15th century, and its replacement, built in 1927, both of which are listed structures. Below the bridges is a sewage treatment works, built in the 1990s. At Brainshaugh, the river passes over a large horseshoe dam, built in 1775 by the engineer John Smeaton to power an iron and tin works, which later became a woollen mill, and subsequently one of the first factories to be powered by hydroelectricity. Before it reaches Warkworth, the river passes over another dam, which is now part of the intake works for Warkworth Water Treatment Works, which supplies drinking water to some 92,000 customers in the region. Below the dam the river is tidal, and Warkworth Castle is built in a loop of the Coquet. The river reaches the sea at Warkworth Harbour in Amble, where there is a Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboat station. The river has been used as a source of power, as a number of mills have been constructed along its length. One of the earliest was on Hepden Burn, a tributary in the upper reaches, which was mentioned in the early 13th century, but was not subsequently developed, due to unrest in the area. Archaeological investigation between 2010 and 2013 revealed one of the few unaltered medieval mill sites in Britain, and pushed the development of the breast-shot water wheel back by three centuries. Although most of the mills were used for grinding corn, some were used for fulling of wool, and that at Brainshaugh for an industrial process. The earliest was at Warkworth, the rent from which was used to provide a light in St Cuthbert's shrine in 1214. The earliest known reference to the River Coquet is found in the Ravenna Cosmography, which dates from the 8th century. The water quality of the non-tidal river is good ecologically, and only in the final tidal section is the water affected by run-off from agricultural land, reducing the quality to moderate.

Broomhill (Northumberland) railway station
Broomhill (Northumberland) railway station

Broomhill railway station served the village of Broomhill in Northumberland, England, a former pit village. The station was on a short branch line of about 5 miles (8 km) which linked the town of Amble with the East Coast Main Line near to Chevington. The line through the station site was opened in September 1849 by the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Railway Company (YN&BR) to carry coal from the local collieries to Amble's Warkworth Harbour, the station itself was opened on 2 June 1879 by which time the YN&BR had become part of the North Eastern Railway. The station was located in a shallow cutting on the east side of what is now Station Road, opposite the Broomhill Hotel (now The Trap Inn), there was one platform on the north side of a single track, immediately to the east of the station was a passing loop which itself had a small goods yard and shed to its north, the yard was equipped with a 1½ ton crane. To the south of the station were extensive sidings serving Broomhill Colliery and its associated brickworks and gas works. In the winter of 1912/1913 the station had four weekday services in each direction with an extra three or four services on Saturdays, there were no services on Sundays. The passenger service closed on 7 July 1930, with the last train two days before on 5 July, and the goods service closed 34 years later on 4 May 1964 although by this time it had been reduced to a public delivery siding. The station had 27,746 passengers in 1911.