Mining Subsidence in Boosbeck – 1883

This news report from the 1st August 1883 describes the first damage to Albion Street and Gerrie Street. It includes an account from P.C. Teesdale who lived at 3 Albion Street.

On the Tuesday night his door will not close, at 9am there are cracks in the wall, by 11am parted one inch, at 12pm a portion of the wall nearly falls on his child.

After this the the floor began to upheave, the walls to open and the land adjoining the houses to crack. By 4pm seventeen families have removed their furniture from the houses.

Later in the month on the 23rd August 1883 a detailed account is given on the continuing damage to Albion Street, Gerrie Street, Fenton Street and Carnie Street. 50-60 homes are damaged at this time.

It also mentions London Terrace which had been damaged by subsidence two years before.

By November 1883 the damage is still continuing to spread North across the village and legal action is brewing.

The case reached court in early 1884 and mentions that a total of 200 houses were eventually damaged. The cases are brought against Mr Jackson who is the landowner. It rules that problems were caused by “improper working of the ironstone” by Stevenson, Jacques and Co.

By March 1884 the case is back in the courts, Walker (the mine manager) claims he was working under Jacksons (the land owners) orders to remove the pillars from under village.

A few days later it is reported that all of Jacksons properties and liabilities pass to Stevenson, Jacques and Co. Mr Potts is assigned to assess the compensation due to the owners.

The abandonment plan below shows the ironstone workings under central Boosbeck, the large squares on the top-left are the normal large bord-and -pillar workings.

The smaller central squares appear to be split pillars, where the large pillar have been divided into quarters to begin total removal of the ironstone.

The speckled area bottom-right under Albion Street is goafed, the remaining pillars have been extracted, this will generally result in surface subsidence and damage to houses above.

The mine plan doesn’t leave me in any doubt that the removal of the pillars and the goafing of the area in the bottom-right was the root cause of the subsidence.

It has been suggested that a substantial layer of quicksand below Boosbeck aggravated the problem, this is probably also true as the damage continued to spread into the areas where pillars were still in places for several months afterwards (when presumably pillar extraction had halted)