NSWMining
Wallsend
A coal company named it after a Tyneside pit town.
1861Newcastle-Wallsend colliery opens
WHAT STARTED IT
The Newcastle-Wallsend Coal Company bought 560 acres west of Newcastle from Alexander Brown, sank a shaft and built a railway to the Great Northern line. The mine took the name of Wallsend, the coal town near Newcastle upon Tyne, and a township was laid out beside it.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Wallsend grew alongside Plattsburg, a second mining town closer to a miners’ co-operative mine; Wallsend became a municipality in 1874 and the two had re-joined by 1915. By 1882 the company employed more people than the Australian Agricultural Company.
TURNING POINTS
1860The company reports buying 560 acres from Alexander Brown and sinking its first shaft.
1861Directors show visiting politicians the newly opened colliery and its railway in March.
1874Wallsend is proclaimed a municipality and elects its first council in April.
1876Neighbouring Plattsburg is proclaimed a separate municipality.
1915Plattsburg is incorporated back into Wallsend.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A large western suburb of Newcastle. The railway goods shed in Cowper Street, on the State Heritage Register, is the last surviving structure of the coal company’s railway.
KEEP READING · SOURCESCoalfields Local History Association · WallsendTrove · Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 1860, ‘Newcastle Wallsend Coal Company’Trove · Sydney Morning Herald, 12 May 1860, ‘The Wallsend Coal Mining Company’s Collieries’Trove · Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1861, ‘Newcastle Wallsend Coal Company: Trip to the Mine’Trove · Newcastle Chronicle, 21 April 1874, untitled (first election in the new municipality)Trove · Tweed Daily, 27 January 1916, ‘News Summary’ (elections for the amalgamated Wallsend and Plattsburg)NSW State Heritage Register · Railway Goods Shed, Wallsend (00739)Wikipedia · Wallsend, New South Wales