History & Heritage

Last updated: 21 March 2006

Plashetts is a parish of the upper North Tyne. Its public story, as we tell it here, is the colliery, the railway that served it, the church, and the woodland that followed. Coal made a village in a remote valley. The woods have kept it. A longer paper is held at the Heritage Centre, with photographs, a roll of names, and a model of the pit-head as it stood. A short account of mining is given on this site for the visitor who will take the morning in the village and the afternoon on the parish trail. What follows is for visitors.

The name itself is older than the pit. A short account of how it has been written is under a note on the name. The Green Man is not a separate history. It is the name the parish has given to a carving in the church and to the walk that starts from the green. Stories of the woods are still told at the Gathering, alongside the story of the pit. We do not offer a scholarly account; we offer the village as it is.

Allow an hour for the mining gallery if you like to read labels, and a little longer if you mean to sit. The memorial garden is on the way to the church and is part of the same story. The Class and the brickworks have notes of their own. Trail leaflets at the desk will take you on from there.