Harton was formerly a
township and
chapelry in the parish of
Jarrow, in 1866 Harton became a separate
civil parish, on 1 November 1921 the parish was abolished and merged with South Shields and
Whitburn. In 1921 the parish had a population of 2437. It is now in the
unparished area of South Shields.
Structures The village of Harton has been built around St Peter's Church for over 150 years now, and the church is still active to this day. Other buildings of note in the village are The Vigilant Inn and The Old Ship
pubs. Opposite The Vigilant, the old walls of the village are still visible.
Transport The whole town of
South Shields had horse-drawn, then electric trams, before
electric trolleybuses were introduced in 1936.
Harton Colliery There was a colliery near Harton established sometime in the 1800s, as it features on, and has full rail infrastructure on, the Ordnance Survey map of 1896. There is also reference from the Durham Mining Museum to one fatality, where a man was "crushed in the cage" ('the cage' being slang for the carriage that transported men to and from the surface), on the 25 February 1851, although it is not known how well-established the colliery was at this point. Harton Colliery was the location of a successful experiment in 1854 by the
Astronomer Royal,
George Biddell Airy, to calculate the mean density of the earth by recording the difference in the movements of a
pendulum at the top and bottom of a coal mine. ==References==