Rochester : Coal Workings
North of the fort and particularly beyond Coal Cleugh, the small stream on that side, lie the traces of a group of coal workings (NY 831 991 - Day & Charlton 1981, 292 App. 1.6; Charlton & Day 1976, 232, 241 nr. 113). These generally go under the name Hillock or Bush Colliery in the documentary sources (Bush being the name of a cottage on the north bank of Coal Cleugh shown by MacLauchlan and the early OS maps, and occupied by the end of the 18th century - EPR 224, death of Richard Smith of Bush, cartman, in 1798). Numerous grass-grown mounds left by similar workings can still be discerned on the surrounding moorland, at Huel Crag (NY 833 996), Christie's Bog (NT 837 005), and near the Sills Burn (NT 834 022) to the north, and at Petty Knowes (NY 836 983) south-east of the fort (Day & Charlton 1981, 292 App. 1.6; Charlton & Day 1976, 232, 241 nos. 114, 117). At least some of these were probably associated with Hillock Colliery.
Hillock Colliery is first attested in the land tax assessments of 1774-1777 (NRO - QRP 1774-7, cf. Day & Charlton 1981, 273). It features again in the 1806 land tax returns (QRP 1806) and was still working in the 1820's (Miller 1887, 25-26), whilst Hodgson (1827, 86) notes that the seam worked at Hillock in 1819 was 20 inches thick and that the clay spoil heaps would spontaneously combust ‘the fire ... often so intense as to burn the clay into a hard cindery scoria and to leave little or no ashes’. This technique may have been deliberately used to produce fire-clay for bricks (Charlton & Day 1976, 232, 241 nr. 113). Other seams, as yet unworked, were also known in Hodgson's day.
MacLauchlan's reported discussions with local colliers (1852a, 33-34), regarding the geology of the area, imply that coal was still being extracted in the area north of High Rochester in the mid-19th century, the workings perhaps extending up towards Huel Crag by this stage. There is no explicit mention of coal-working on the 1st edition 6 inch series Ordnance Survey map of 1866 (surveyed 1863). Traces of former coal-working - heaps or pits - are however clearly marked on 1866 map (and on its successor of 1897) in the fields and moorland around Hillock, whilst a particularly large bell-pit appears 100 yds NNW of the fort itself, in the immediately adjacent field (NY 831 987). This latter reappears on the 1897 OS map, but in a far less distinct form. It is distinct from the 'tumulus' or 'barrow' of 'Gallow Hill', mentioned by Hodgson (1827, 149) and MacLauchlan (1852a, 35) and marked on MacLauchlan's plan just west of the fort's NW angle.
Charlton and Day (1976, 236, nr. 13) consider that the Gallow Hill tumulus too was the result of coal-workings or quarrying rather than a prehistoric burial monument, in which case that working must have ceased well before 1810 when Hodgson visited the site. A similar interpretation is advanced regarding the tumulus at Dykehead, first noted by MacLauchlan (1852a, 35; cf. Charlton & Day 1976, 236, 241 nos. 8 & 110). If correct, that would point to another pit which had gone out of use before 1851. The Hillock workings as a whole, if not already abandoned in the 1860's, probably did not last much longer. Certainly they had all ceased operating by 1910 (Day & Charlton 1981, 281).
Other collieries existed in the neighbourhood just to the west of Rochester. Rochester Colliery at Bellshiel (NY 816 995) seems to have started up around the same time as the workings at Hillock (Day & Charlton 1981, 273, 291 App. 1.4; 1976, 236, 241, nr.2 & 103). The establishment of Birdhope Craig Colliery (NY 828 988 & 828 983) between 1804 and 1806 has left extensive documentation (cf. Day & Charlton 1981, 274-280, 291 App. 1.5; 1976, 236, 241, nos. 4 & 106). Like Hillock, Birdhope Craig had ceased operations by the opening of the twentieth century, but the Bellshiel pit was one of the last commercial working mines in Redesdale, only closing in 1935 (ibid.: 281).
