Horror as 66 ponies scalded to death in south Durham pit

The postcard, which featured an idyllic picture of Auckland Castle in the moonlit, was sent on May 7, 1906, to MA Beeton who lived in East Howle, a mining community to the north of Ferryhill. Very little of East Howle remains today because of the terrible events of September 12, 1903.

East Howle in 1967, shortly before it was demolished

The three terraces of East Howle – known as Railway, Station and Pit streets – were built after 1872 when the colliery was sunk beside the Byers Green branch of the Clarence Railway.

This was an absolute hive of industry. There were three shafts, two of which dropped 80 fathoms (480ft) to the Busty and Brockwell seams. A 12ft diameter fan spinning at 250 revolutions a minute kept the mines ventilated, and in the colliery yard were 195 beehive coke ovens, each 11ft in diameter. Each oven coked 11 tons of coal a week, the heat generated being used to raise steam which powered the 22 engines on the site.

There were nine kilns, each of which could heat 15,000 bricks handmade from Brockwell clay.

In all, 1,000 men were employed in this hive along with the 66 ponies, which were stabled underground in the Busty seam, about 20 yards from the shaft bottom.

On the Saturday night, “there was a very large fall of stone at the shaft bottom”, said The Northern Echo, and so it wasn’t until the Sunday morning that the Master Shifter and the horsekeeper had been able to reach the stables and discover the grim truth.

The stonefall had broken a steam pipe beside the stables, spurting scalding steam and water all over the animals.

“The poor horses were discovered in a variety of positions, and many had broken loose, and all had evidently suffered very much before succumbing to the hot atmosphere,” said the Echo. “The pipe that burst is one that feeds the hauling engine and the pumping engine from the boilers at banks."

The short report concluded: "There are upwards of 1,000 men and boys employed at the colliery, and these will be laid idle until the damage caused by the fall of stone is repaired and until fresh ponies can be obtained and sent down.

"The dead ponies were brought to bank during the afternoon and buried."

This was a deadly blow to the colliery itself. The Brockwell seam had been exhausted in 1897 followed by the Harvey seam in 1902. Eighteen months after the disaster, all the remaining seams were abandoned as they, too, had become unprofitable.

The colliery never fully recovered and closed 18 months later.

Auckland Castle and St Peter's Chapel in the moonlight on a postcard with a May 7, 1906, postmark on it. It was sent to MA Beeton at 49, East Howle, Ferryhill, with the message: "I am returning to canny Newcastle tonight, Jane"

IN the middle of all the upheaval was the recipient of our postcard, who, according to the ink on the address side, was MA Beeton of 49, East Howle.

“I think she was Margaret Alice Beeton, born October 29, 1889, in Tow Law, probably in Prince Street,” says Billy Mollon, who has used the postcard as an excuse for some genealogical delving. “My father, Harold Mollon, was born in Prince Street which is where the workers of the Black Prince Colliery lived.

“Margaret’s father, John Beeton, was born in 1848 at Hetton-le-Hole and her mother, Margaret Jane Beeton, was born in 1849 in Sherburn Village, where my mother, Mary Jane Alderson, was born.

“On the 1901 census the Beeton family were living at East Howle.”

So Mr Beeton took his family to East Howle when it was a thriving settlement: as well as the three terraces, there was a Methodist chapel, several shops and a couple of pubs as well as the station.

But within a couple of years of the Beetons’ arrival, the ponies were killed in the accident and the mine was closed.

Margaret would have been 17 when she received the postcard. How long did she stay in this doomed village?

East Howle in 1967, shortly before it was demolished

IN 1951, East Howle was one of 114 villages where the mine had died which was placed in Durham County Council’s economic development category D. D was the lowest of the four categories, and although the D didn’t stand for “death”, it must have felt like that.

The council defined Category D villages: “Those from which a considerable loss of population may be expected. In these cases it is felt that there should be no further investment of capital on any considerable scale, and that any proposal to invest capital should be carefully examined. This generally means that when the existing houses become uninhabitable they should be replaced elsewhere, and that any expenditure on facilities and services in these communities which would involve public money should be limited to conform to what appears to be the possible future life of existing property in the community... There is no proposal to demolish any village, nor is there a policy against genuine village life. It is proposed to remould gradually the pattern of development in the interests of the county as a whole."

So these villages were not going to get any investment or development; they were just going to be allowed to wither.

In 1964, another seven villages were added to the list of the doomed, but only a handful of them were completely erased from the map. East Howle was one of that handful, demolished at the end of the 1960s, leaving only the East Howle Hotel – now a private residence – standing, and the last time Memories visited, there were plenty of horses grazing in fields which showed the scars and forgotten clinker of their former industrial use. Fortunately, the horses were not able to know what happened to their fellows in 1903 directly beneath their hooves.

The site of East Howle in 2009, with ponies grazing where the pitmen's houses had once stood and the East Howle Hotel converted into a house on the right

THE most famous East Howlian has a unique place in British television history: it was he who introduced the magnetic weather symbols to the BBC forecast.

He was Jack Scott (above), born in 1923 the son of a miner, who became a familiar face to millions during the 1970s and 1980s.

He believed he was one of just two children from East Howle to pass the 11-plus exam and make it to Alderman Wraith Grammar School in Spennymoor. This proved his way out, for while his friends in the village began looking for pit jobs at the age of 14, he was still at his studies.

When he was 17 and preparing to go for a Saturday night dance, he heard on the wireless that they were seeking grammar school boys to train up as weathermen. He applied, was interviewed in distant Darlington, was successful and sent to college even further away in Gloucester.

As a qualified meteorologist, he returned to RAF Thornaby to provide weather advice to the airmen. He also did wartime weather service in Shetland, Africa and Malta and remained with the Met Office until 1969 when he joined the BBC as its 20th weatherman.

In those days, the weather was all about deep depressions and isobars, but avuncular Jack made it more friendly by applying magnetic symbols of black clouds or yellow suns to the map behind him. Never mind that the symbols kept sliding downwards so that by the end of the forecast there was a hell of a lot of weather due in the English Channel.

Jack retired from the BBC as senior forecaster in 1983 and then had five years on the other side with Thames Television. He died in 2008 at his home in Buckinghamshire, aged 85, but was always keen on news from East Howle.

READ MORE: DEFEATING THE FRIGHTENING WILD BOAR OF FERRYHILL

Former TV Weatherman Jack Scott in 1983