Burradon Colliery
(Courtesy Newcastle Chronicle)

Developer Graham Anderson who is to name his new Burradon development after a local philanthropist, and Evening Chronicle Editor John Baxter Langley

A campaigner who championed the cause of miners at a North East disaster colliery is to be commemorated in the pit village where the tragedy happened.

John Baxter Langley was a doctor who became editor of the Newcastle Chronicle and formed a bond with the pitmen at Burradon Colliery in what is now North Tyneside.

He feared for their safety and predicted that a disaster could happen at the pit. In 1860 it did, when an explosion killed 76 men and boys.

Langley fought to counter claims that the disaster was the fault of the miners and had questions raised in Parliament.

Now his name is to live on in the village thanks to the efforts of the Burradon & Camperdown Forum.

Members of the forum, set up in 1997 to improve the village and commemorate its mining past, asked developer Graham Anderson to name a new housing project currently under way in Burradon after Langley.

Mr Anderson, managing director of Cramlington-based Compass Developments, agreed and the eight houses and one apartment on the site of village’s former social club is now set to be called Langley Court.

“John Baxter Langley was, and still is, revered in Burradon for the part he played in helping the pitmen during the time surrounding the devastating pit explosion which occurred in March, 1860,” said forum secretary Chris Wray.

“He was a prominent figure in the reform movement of the mid-19th Century and an influential campaigner for the amelioration of the conditions of working men especially on Tyneside when editor of the Newcastle Chronicle.

“He became well connected and could count the likes of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx among his friends and acquaintances. However, the enormous contribution he made to society has largely been forgotten.

“There is nothing in the North East to commemorate his life.

“Shortly after becoming editor of the Newcastle Chronicle, under the ownership of Joseph Cowen, he became acquainted with the pitmen of Burradon Colliery.

“This was one of the largest collieries in the neighbourhood and was still rapidly expanding its operations. This was the cause of great concern to the workforce as safety measures were not keeping pace.”

Langley urged the colliery owners to put an insurance scheme in place, in case of injury or death, to be known as The Miners Provident Association, but this never happened.

Mr Wray said: “The expected disaster did happen and Langley was extremely critical in his newspaper of the colliery owners and establishment in general. But he gave help in a practical way too by raising a subscription fund, first of all for the relief of families affected by the explosion, but also to pay for lawyers in pursuing compensation.”

Mr Anderson said: “I’m from Cramlington and this seems to be a great way to remember John Baxter Langley, who was quite a pivotal person in Burradon’s history.”

Langley, who had a great respect for the pitmen of Burradon, wrote: “We talked of politics and social economics in a way which would have astonished the Conservative members of the Coal Trade.

“We speak with a complete knowledge of the men employed in the Burradon pit when we say that, for integrity, generosity and general intelligence, we have never met with their superiors among any class of working-men”.

The forum has previously marked Burradon’s mining past by erecting a pit wheel as a village entrance feature and commemorated the 1860 disaster with the restoration of a scroll commissioned in 1895 to the memory of the victims and also a montage at Burradon Primary School.