Closing of the Colliery
The village of Wardley Colliery, half a mile south east of Pelaw, between Shields and Sunderland turnpikes, after an existence of obscurity has, by force of circumstances, been thrust into an inevitable notoriety.  It owes its existence to the opening of the colliery there at the present mentioned, and has grown up round it depending wholly upon it for the employment of its inhabitants, and now that the fortnights notice has expired regarding its closing –the motive power switched off and the ponies brought to bank – the villagers just feel like the bottom has dropped out of the universe.  There are fully four hundred families of them or rather were, for since last Saturday many houses have been emptied and the occupants scattered.  As for the great majority still remaining, some are hoping against hope that the mine will be reopened again after a short time, and others are looking to the opening of a new shaft at Follonsby in the same district by the same owners, Bowes and Partners, but at best that cannot be in the near future.
The visitor to Wardley finds it a depressing place under the circumstances and it is a matter of thankfulness that it has never been a great trading centre, the people being mostly dependant on business premises in the neighbouring communities of Bill Quay of Pelaw, where from the point of view of employment, the inhabitant, unlike those of Wardley have not got all their eggs in one basket.  The local pessimist in prophesising the extinction of Wardley as a community after its half century existence.  One hesitates to subscribe to that knowing the demand for dwelling houses in any district within easy, or for that matter, uneasy reach, of the growing mining population.  If the local pessimist is wrong about the ending of Wardley he is most certainly wrong about its beginnings for the antiquarian knows that it has a history reaching well back into the centuries
In the chronicles of Simon of Durham (AD 995), we find that at Wardley or Weredelaw the corpse of St Cuthbert became immovable and the wandering monks were directed to its resting place at Durham.  Hodgson, the historian, supports this claim and argues out the matter in “Archaelogia Aeliana” Vol.V1  page 112:
“Here in 1258 was a summer residence of the priors of Durham, an old religious house where in 1313 a according to Surtees, William de Tanfield, Prior of Durham retired.  It stood on a site of about six acres and part of it enclosed by a deep fosse with an earthen mount on the outer side that measured about 145 feet on the North and 211ft on the south, 143 ft on the west and 197 ft on the east.  The ditch varied from 9-13ft in breadth and was 6ft deep, filled up to admit a road from west to east.  In 1820 there were traces of the fish ponds on the south side and of the garden in the North East corner.”
Hodgson confirms this, and gives a plan as an engraving.  Hutchinson, writing in the previous century, mentions the site and concludes it to be the remains of the moat or wall surrounding a manor house in former times.
The Scots are said to have destroyed the prior house in one of their raids and on its site was built the Manor house of Wardley near the old village of Wardley, which we find on 17th – 18th century maps, but which like so many of the agricultural centres, disappeared or was merged in the new mining centre of the 19th century.  Here resided the Brandling family as also at the old hall adjoining Felling station, just recently taken down.  Here also in 1700 we find from the “Sharp MSS”, in the chapter ‘House at Durham’ a “certificate of Lord Rutherfords house at Wardley being set apart as a Dissenting Meeting house.” This was a certificate of registration with the local sessions and referred to a meeting place for the descendants of the followers of the rejected Presbyterian Vicar in 1662 from the parent church at Jarrow, Frances Batty.  We find the same congregation again in 1729 in “Evans lists of Dissenting Chapels” as at Heworth in the same parish, with Alexander Creighton MA a graduate of Glasgow, as their minister, traces of them later in part of the parish at the beginning of the 19th century developing into what has been since 1830 the independent church at Felling, and again revived a few years ago as the Pelaw Presbyterian Church.     
The Lord Rutherford mentioned in the licence is an interesting man.  We find from the “Scottish Peerage” that he was one of the Rutherfords of Hunthill, N.B. the head of the house.  He had evidently lived not wisely but too well, made over the estates to another branch of the family and settled in England.  We find him at the old Manor house at Wardley in 1700 and at Ashington Hall in 1709, with burial registers of the family in the parish registers of Bothal Morepeth and Elsdon.  He was a Presbyterian himself and a patron of the cause wherever he resided, hence the licence at Wardley.  At the present Wardley Hall near the Sunderland turnpike are traces of the old moat.