Washington Colliery — F Pit Washington · Tyne and Wear · England

The F Pit shaft of the New Washington Colliery was sunk in 1777 in what is now the Albany area of Washington, Sunderland. The colliery operated under a lease of the coal granted in December 1775 by the lords of the manor of Washington — Robert Shafto, Sir Gilfred Lawson, and Sir James Musgrave — to William Russell and Partners, a coal shipping agent from Sunderland. The colliery comprised a number of small pits spread across the area, each identified by a letter from A to I. The F Pit was one of the earliest, sunk to a depth of 283 metres, and is thought to have been among the earliest working pits in the country. First coals were taken by wagonway to Sunderland by 1778. Shortly after sinking, the pit had to be abandoned following an explosion in 1796 which flooded the shaft. It did not reopen until 1820.

In 1856 the shaft was deepened to reach the Hutton coal seam at approximately 200 metres, and by 1870 the F Pit had become a major coal outlet for the colliery. Most of the smaller letter-pits in the area were progressively abandoned as output concentrated at a few highly modernised collieries, of which the F Pit was the principal survivor. The most significant transformation of the surface came in 1903, when the colliery was extensively remodelled, producing the principal buildings that survive today. The twin-cylinder steam winding engine that dominates the engine house was built by the Grange Iron Company of Durham in 1888 but was installed at the F Pit secondhand; the present engine house was built in 1926 to accommodate it. The engine, capable of approximately 500 horsepower, is a horizontal twin-cylinder steam machine of a type which dominated coal winding until the introduction of electrical winding in the early twentieth century. From 1927 electricity was brought to all faces underground and pneumatic picks were introduced. Following nationalisation of the coal industry in the late 1940s the pit was further deepened.

The colliery reached peak production in the mid 1960s, producing approximately 486,000 tonnes of saleable coal per year at its height and employing over 1,500 workers. At its earlier peak in 1921 the colliery had employed 1,785 men and boys. The final coal was drawn on 21 June 1968. Over the course of its working life approximately 150 fatalities were recorded at the mine. Among the recorded disasters were an explosion caused by a naked flame in 1850 that killed 13 men; a cage accident on 31 May 1867 in which a brakeman failed to stop the cage at the shaft top, causing the rope to break and the cage to fall 750 feet, killing eight men and two boys; and a gas explosion caused by shot-firing in 1885 that killed 42 men.

After closure the site was cleared, with the engine house and headgear presented to the people of Washington by the National Coal Board as a memorial to mining in the area. A museum was opened on the site in 1976 by Washington Development Corporation. Tyne and Wear Museums Service took responsibility in April 1984, and Sunderland City Council subsequently became the managing authority. The winding engine is maintained in working order, now operated by electric motor for demonstration purposes; the boiler was removed to create an interpretation area. The engine house is a two-storey red-brick structure with a hipped Welsh slate roof. The steel lattice headgear remains on site and is included in the scheduling within a separate area of protection. The site is both a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade II listed building, and one of only ten Scheduled Ancient Monuments in the city of Washington. Plans for a new visitor centre and cafe, designed by Mosedale Gillatt Architects, were submitted in late 2024, proposing new exhibition spaces and landscape improvements.