Nicholas Wood Lecture

Join historian Bill Lancaster to explore the life of talented nineteenth-century mining engineer Nicholas Wood, who revolutionised deep mining and transportation. The talk is organised to coincide with the exhibition Sound Strata of Coastal Northumberland which features Wood’s 12.5-metre strata diagram that illustrates the location of coal measures on the Northumberland coast. In addition, the exhibition also includes an archive display of Wood’s other geological work in relation to the coal measures of Northumberland. Throughout the nineteenth century, a circle of men from Tyneside, Wearside and the Great Northern Coalfield, such as George and Robert Stephenson (friends and colleagues of Nicholas Wood), helped create the modern industrial world. Bill Lancaster will talk about this group of innovators, who in 1852 founded The Mining Institute in Newcastle with Nicholas Wood as its first president. Nicholas Wood was born in 1795, at the farm of Daniel, lying between Bradley Hall and Wylam, of which his father was a tenant. In 1811, through the influence of his father’s landlord Sir Thomas Liddell, he was sent to Killingworth Colliery to learn the profession of a coal-viewer. At Killingworth, Wood met George Stephenson and made the working drawing from which the first Stephenson safety lamp was made and tested in a dangerous blower in Killingworth Pit. By the 1830s, Wood had acquired a considerable reputation as a colliery and railway engineer, and was rapidly extending his influence in the coal trade. By 1844 he was managing the important collieries at Hetton, had become the sole owner of Black Boy, Coundon, Westerton and Leasingthorne collieries, and part owner of Harton, Hilda and Jarrow collieries. In response to the Mines Inspection Act of 1852, local colliery owners and mining engineers formed The Mining Institute, of which Nicholas Wood was elected the founding president. Bill Lancaster was the founder and editor of Northern Review, a Journal of Regional and Cultural Affairs, and the director of the Centre for Northern Studies from 1997 – 2007. Until 2008 he taught at Northumbria University and was director there of the Centre for North East History. He was awarded a BA in History and Sociology, a MA in Comparative Social History and a PhD in History from Warwick University. He was elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1991. Free, advance booking recommended, phone: Woodhorn Museum on 01670 624 455
Admission
Parking Charge of £3.50 applies

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk//ne000064?id=EVENT518704