Woodhorn Colliery

.
.

.
.
Woodhorn Colliery, in south-east Northumberland, was a working pit from 1894 until its closure in 1981. The site reopened as a colliery museum in 1989. Architects for the new visitor's centre there were RMJM Architects.
.
Woodhorn is home to a collection of art from the Ashington Group - more commonly known as the Pitmen Painters. They were mainly a group of miners, who got together in the 1930s to study art appreciation; they began to paint themselves and produced work depicting a wide variety of local life , from working underground to domestic and leisure pursuits. Playwright Lee Hall ( Billy Elliott) created a play about them, called the "Pitmen Painters" , which premiered at Live Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2007. It subsequently had two very successful runs at the National Theatre in London and is currently playing at the Kunsthalle in Vienna, Austria.