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Plashetts village was located on a hill overlooking the north Tyne valley and housed miners and their families who worked in the nearby Plashetts coal mine. The village, which existed from around 1890 to 1920, lay on either side of a wagonway in a series of terraces called rather prosaically, Stone Row, Shop Row, Wood Row and Tile Row. There was also a chapel at the west end of the settlement.
Plashetts village
Shop Row
Stone and Tile Row
The remains of the foundations of the streets can still be seen and the occasional Plashett's brick found, made in the brickworks that lay close to the now lost Border Counties Railways station in the bottom of the valley.
For the modern traveller travelling the north shore along the Lakeside Way, the site lies between the Salmon Cubes to the west, and the head of the Belling Inlet to the east, although visitors should note that Plashetts Village lay well above and north of the main track.
A few hundred metres to the east of the Salmon Cubes, the Lakeside Way crosses the line of Plashetts Incline where coal wagons used to be lowered down a steep wagonway to Plashetts station.
Follow the line of the old wagonway up the hill and then along the flat for just over half a mile to the site of the village.
Plashetts incline
If travelling from the east, a rough road leading up the hill to the right just beyond the Bellingburn Bridge gives visitors access to the site of the village.
A modern forest road now follows the route of the wagonway. It continues west from the village site and over an embankment that now holds back a lake where lilies grow in summer. After skirting around the hillside the line of the track bed eventually disappears close to the head of the Belling Inlet and just short of the site of Plashetts coal mine a couple of hundred metres further up the valley, although little now exists to show it was ever there.
On the opposite side of the Belling Inlet two more terraces called Far Colliery ran up the hill. This site is now covered by mature forest and the only evidence remaining of the houses are a few broken bricks in amongst the tree roots.
Far Colliery
