Waterhouses

Joseph Pease, a Darlington Quaker, obtained permission in the mid-1850s to mine coal near High Waterhouse, which was a farm on the Brancepeth estate. The land was then owned by Gustavus Russell Hamilton-Russell and his wife Emma Maria, descendants of Sir Frederick Hamilton of Dromahere. There were initial difficulties in the mining, but Pease sinkers eventually located coal, and the Deerness Valley Railway was laid from a junction at the North Eastern Railway at Relly, up the Deerness valley to the new coal pit. The company built housing for the new workers and a village grew up at the Mary Pit with residential areas south of the railway line. Most of the new mine workers were born in…