Lambton Collieries

The name derives from Lambton Castle, the ancestral family home of the Lambton family. With coal having been extracted in the area from the 1600s, the commercial extraction of coal was developed by John Lambton in the lands surrounding the castle through the Wear Valley. The first of seven pits was sunk in the village of Bournmoor from 1783 onwards, which together were to make up what was known as Lambton Colliery. The company was first formed when Lambton's grandson, John Lambton the first Earl of Durham, entered Parliament as a Whig politician. The formal name change to Lambton Collieries was adopted in 1896. In 1910 the company merged with Hetton Collieries to form Lambton & Hetton…