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Remains of Shop Row, Plashetts

I was first drawn to Plashetts by a reference in a Geographia book about Northumbria which was “the ghost village of Plashetts “in the early 1970s. It was quite close to a picnic area called Lewis Burn that existed long before the reservoir of Kielder Water was constructed. Over the bridge was the disused Plashetts Station on what was the Border Counties Railway Line. About a mile away up a steep incline were the remains of Plashetts Village a mining community. The Colliery was well established in 1873 when a reporter from the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle visited it to write a feature on the village and he estimated that 500 people lived in and around Plashetts and the village was expanding because stone houses under construction were mentioned. Later a row and wooden house were constructed and imaginatively named Wood Row.

The foundations of the houses could be clearly seen as the site had been cleared by students at Newcastle University and you could clearly see the layout of the downstairs rooms particularly in what was Chapel, Shop and Stable Row as well as the Methodist Church. Over the next 15 years I took various school groups to visit Plashetts and on one occasion one of my pupils told be her father had been born at Plashetts. His birth certificate showed he’d been born in Tile Row in 1932 and was probably one of the last babies to be born there because the mine closed in 1933. On that particular visit we were accompanied by two of her uncles who had worked at Plashetts and they brought the place to life. They could tell you everyone who lived in the various houses as well as showing us where the Far Colliery was and Seldom Seen named because it was tucked well away from the main village. Seldom Seen was where the first drift was established. Spasmodic attempts were made to revive coal mining in the Plashetts area but all attempts were abandoned in the early 1960s although a mine existed into the 1980’s at Falstone.