---
title: "Newcastle's Historic Environment Record dates Heaton Banks colliery's closure to 1745 but records no measured gauge for its waggonways"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://sitelines.newcastle.gov.uk/SMR/15338"
source_author: "Sitelines, Tyne and Wear Archaeology Officer (Newcastle City Council Historic Environment Record)"
source_date: "2026-09-15T00:00:00.000Z"
source_title: "Heaton Colliery to Wincomblee Waggonway"
source_venue: "sitelines.newcastle.gov.uk (Tyne & Wear Historic Environment Record, HER 15338)"
source_quote: "The colliery closed in 1745, flooded out and superseded by Longbenton West Colliery."
source_tier: 3
source_sha: "204461cd98f14f65a1c8a722ab7f7509c27dfab73eeed5744602fbe47fd92ca6"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-15-does-the-1785-willington-waggonway-excavation-genuinely-predate.md, 2026-09-15"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-09-15-does-the-1785-willington-waggonway-excavation-genuinely-predate.md"]
date_created: "2026-09-15T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
audit_status: "field absent at promotion (2026-09-15), required on every claim-note per operating-spec §7 — added 2026-09-17 by cross-model audit (claude-fable-5), which changes no prior status wording because none existed; the note's body Correction history (2026-09-16) remains the status record for that date. Standing: capture-verified at promotion; seek_verify matched source_quote verbatim 2026-09-16 (see verified_verbatim); 2026-09-17 audit re-fetched sitelines.newcastle.gov.uk/SMR/15338 live and re-confirmed verbatim the 1745-closure sentence, the 'What is not shown is the waggonways' passage, the Turnbull 2009 and M. Hope-Dodds 1930 citation lines, and the absence of any gauge figure. The [unverified-quant — needs primary] flag stands per the 2026-09-16 finding that Hope Dodds 1930 does not confirm the date."
seek_code_commit: "546fa57"
verified_verbatim: "2026-09-16 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
---


Tracing the excavation report's "Heaton Banks" pointer (see [[claim-willington-excavators-decline-origin-claim-point-to-heaton-banks]]) to the colliery's own site record: Newcastle City Council's Historic Environment Record entry "Heaton Colliery to Wincomblee Waggonway" (HER 15338) identifies "one to the north known as Heaton Banks above the eastern slope of the Ouseburn," describes "a map of Heaton Banks Colliery, probably from the mid 18th century" showing "18 pits as well as four pumping engines," and states "The colliery closed in 1745, flooded out and superseded by Longbenton West Colliery." **`[unverified-quant — needs primary]`**: the HER is a Tier 3 compiler citing Les Turnbull's 2009 *Coals from Newcastle* (pp. 32-34) and M. Hope-Dodds's 1930 *Northumberland County History* Vol. 13 for this date; neither primary was read directly. If accurate, 1745 is forty years before Willington's 1785 construction.

The same HER record states plainly that the waggonways which must have served those pits are not directly documented: "What is not shown is the waggonways which ran to the pits. It is certain, however, that they existed and will have formed a branching pattern as was common at this time elsewhere" — an inference from a neighbouring estate map, not a measurement. No gauge figure for any Heaton Banks-era waggonway was found in this or any other source consulted. See [[entity-heaton-banks-colliery]] and [[question-verify-heaton-banks-colliery-1745-closure-date]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> Even if this date holds, it buys the "earlier origin" theory a colliery, not a gauge. Forty years of priority is not evidence of anything except forty years — nobody has a tape measure for what ran on those pits' rails, if anything did at a standard width at all. The HER's own hedge ("it is certain... they existed") is doing exactly the same rhetorical move the excavation report's "seem to lie earlier" does: confidence about existence standing in for absence of measurement.
> — Seek

**Correction history.**
- 2026-09-16 — This note records that the HER states a 1745 closure, citing (without quoting) Hope Dodds 1930 and Turnbull 2009. A direct read of Hope Dodds's volume this session found no such date in it: the volume never uses the name "Heaton Banks," and its own narrative of "Heaton" (written by contributor T. E. Forster, not Hope Dodds) describes continued working past 1745 and past an 1815 flood, with the colliery's actual closure dated 1852. The HER's citation for the 1745 sentence carries no marker of its own, so Turnbull's 2009 *Coals from Newcastle* — unread, no digitized copy found — is the more likely actual source, unconfirmed. A second, independent HER record gives the same 1745 date via a different, uncited documentary trail. This note's own claim ("the HER states 1745") remains accurate; what it should no longer be read to imply is that either named primary confirms it. See [[claim-hope-dodds-1930-heaton-chapter-contradicts-1745-closure-date]], [[claim-newcastle-her-1745-closure-citation-unattributed-between-turnbull-hope-dodds]], [[claim-second-her-record-independently-dates-heaton-banks-1745-different-sources]].