The archaeology of the Willington Waggonway and Newcastle roads

In the last 25 years, there have been more than 40 excavations of waggonways which once trundled coal from the mines down to the rivers Tyne and Wear so it could be shipped to London.

Those excavations, though, just scrape the surface of the 100 separate systems that were built in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some were only a few hundred yards long; some were 12 miles long; together, they totalled a couple of hundred miles of tracks.

The main line on the left of the Willington Waggonway with the washpond branching off to the right at the Neptune Yard. The Tyne is in the distance

The most complete and best preserved wooden railway in the world was discovered a decade ago beneath Swan Hunter’s former Neptune Yard at Wallsend, and it reveals some of the amazing sophistication of the “Newcastle roads”.

Low Willington Colliery, which was connected by the waggonway to the quay on the Tyne, painted by Thomas Hair

The find is a portion of the Willington Waggonway, which began operating in 1773, with horses pulling laden wagons down to Willington Quay. At its peak, the author estimates there were 42 wagons an hour being moved along its tracks.

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“In terms of the volume of traffic which these railways carried, and of the magnitude of their civil engineering works, many, including the Willington Way, far surpassed George Stephenson’s Stockton and Darlington line,” says early railway expert Les Turnbull in his book which is published by the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME).

A plan from Les Turnbull's book showing the Willington Waggonway going down to the Tyne on the right, and showing how it grew and became connected to other waggonways

As London’s population boomed, so did its demand for coal, and Newcastle satisfied it, producing a third of all of Britain’s coal in the 17th Century. Initially, the coal came from pits located practically at the water’s edge, and during the 18th Century, the largest pumping engines in the world enabled the miners to go as deep as 100 fathoms to reach the best coal.

When the riverside pits became exhausted, new pits higher up were opened, which meant the length of the waggonways grew and they had to overcome more and bigger obstacles – one of the most impressive was a 144 yard long wooden trestle bridge over the Ouseburn.

The Willington Waggonway brought coal down to the staithes on the Tyne were it was loaded into ships for London, and the empty waggons were sent back up to the mines

Everything was wood, with the rails and sleepers often made from reclaimed ships’ timbers.

Wood was strong, but had its drawbacks. The wheels dried out and cracked. Worse, the gradients down to the river were steep so a wooden “convoy” – or stick – was jemmied against the wheels as a brake to slow the heavy wagons. This caused so much friction that the wooden wheels caught fire.

The washpond drive-through pool on the left with the main line of the Willington Waggonway on the higher level on the right

However the excavation of the 12-mile long Willington Waggonway, beside the Segedunum Roman fort, revealed a washpond: a drive-through pool which extinguished the flames and rehydrated the wheels.

The washpond’s construction, with wooden points taking waggons off the main line and pipes channelling in water so there was always a cooling supply, shed further light on the technical sophistication of what is dismissed is often dismissed as a rudimentary wagonway where horses operated at 2mph.

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It also revealed that the distance between the rails was 4ft 8½ inches – the same as that George Stephenson employed on his lines, including the S&DR, which has now become standard gauge the world over.

In fact, towards the end of the 18th Century, one portion of the wagonway at East Denton began offering a travel service to tourists who wished to visit the mine – this could have been the first passenger railway and the colliery viewer, William Thomas, the first to predict railways carrying people between cities, as he did in a lecture at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle on February 11, 1800.

Amid all of this pioneering ingenuity was George Stephenson, who in 1802 set up home on Willington Quay where he worked as an engineman and where his son, Robert, was born in 1803. They would have watched as at least 10 collieries between 1813 and 1822 – perhaps driven by the scarcity of horses as so many were being used in the Napoleonic Wars – tried out early, moving steam locomotives – “travellers”, as they were called.

All of which, argues Les, a teacher, lecturer and education advisor, should place the Newcastle roads at the very beginning of railway history, and yet they are overshadowed by the S&DR which didn’t come along until 1825.

A drawing by Richard Turner showing a horsedrawn waggonway in operation. Here the horse has just crossed Causey Arch, built in 1725 near Stanley, which is the world's oldest surviving single-arched railway bridge

“As we approach another jubilee of the S&DR,” says Les, whose book is part of NEIMME’s campaign on behalf of the waggonways, “large amounts of public money are being spent on the event – dubbed ‘Railway 200’. The old myths are being voiced again. Railways did not begin 200 years ago in 1825.

“Why does the railway industry persist in underselling its heritage and ignoring the greater period of railway history which existed before the opening of the S&DR?

“The 18th Century was an era of major achievements by the mining engineers of the North East which astonished learned men of science both in Britain and abroad.

“It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the reputation of the S&DR is founded upon ignorance of the railways in service before 1825. Hopefully, this book will correct the false narrative of railway history… and perhaps it will restore the mining engineers of the Great Northern Coalfield to their rightful place in history as the men who provided a proven transport system which enabled the Victorian railway revolution to happen – an event which changed how people and goods were transported throughout the world.

“The work of these talented individuals has made an indelible mark on civilisations worldwide and deserves to be recognised. Collectively, they were the Fathers of the Railway.”

• The Willington Waggonway – A Rival to the Stockton and Darlington is published by NEIMME for £15. It is launched on Thursday (January 18) at The Common Room at the institute in Westgate Road, Newcastle. Tickets to the talk are free but need to be booked via eventbrite.co.uk. It is being livestreamed through NEIMME’s website. The talk is repeated on January 31 at 1pm at the Newcastle Lit&Phil – again book tickets through Eventbrite. To get a book, email jennifer.hillyard@thecommonroom.org.uk or call 0191-250-9717.

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Excavations at the Willington Waggonway