History

Ellington

The name Ellington is thought to derive from the saxon meaning “the descendants of Ella”.   

Ellington was the site of the last remaining operational deep coal mine in North East England.  ‘The Big E as’ it was known was closed on 26 January 2005.  It was the last deep coal mine in the UK to extract coal from under the sea.  Pit ponies were used in the colliery until 1994.

Ellington is most well known as being a colliery village but it was a thriving community long before the opening of the colliery, having a school, public houses and several business by the mid-19th century.  

Throughout history, the lands of Ellington have had many owners.  The manor of Ellington was thought to belong to Adam de Periton in 1240, and later to pass by marriage to the ancient families of Vescy and Welles.  The Widdrington Family were known to acquire possessions in Ellington as early as the 13th Century.  In 1715, Lord Widdrington relinquished the manor of Ellington, along with the manors of Woodhorn, Cresswell and Newbiggin.  Other lands and interests in Ellington belonging to other landowners were sold in 1750 to Adam Askew of Newcastle upon Tyne.  By the early 19th Century the village was owned by the Baker-Cresswells.  This remained the case until the sale of their estate in 1924.

The colliery was used as the fictional ‘Everington’ mine in the film Billy Elliott.
 

Linton

Linton took its name from the River Lyne, and at one time it was the property of the de Baliols, Kings of Scotland. 

In 1891 before the Colliery opened, Linton had only twelve houses with a population of fifty-nine.  The majority of these being either coal miners or farmers. In 1894 no real roads existed and the main form of transport was the ‘tankey line’ which took miners to Ashington and back at the end of the day.

Linton Colliery (originally owned by the Ashington Coal Company) began production in 1911.  It changed the face of the onetime rural village with the building of three rows of colliery houses and more shops and businesses.  In 1912 a co-operative store was built on land that had once been part of the Cresswell estate, bringing more prosperity to the village.  By the time the collieries were nationalised in 1947 there were 1,381 men employed.  Linton Colliery closed in 1968.  

Today both villages are made up of mostly private housing with village shops, two Primary Schools, two Village Halls, two public houses and a Social Welfare Centre (known locally as ‘The Tute’).

With thanks to Neil Taylor