A Colliery was opened in Kibblesworth in 1717 by Cotesworth, James Clavering, Henry Liddell and John Hedworth. The colliery shown on Ordnance Survey first edition however opened in 1842 and closed on 4 October 1974. There were two pits - Glamis and Robert Pits.

This was the first of the two pits, having opened just under 100 years before Glamis.

The owners were John Bowes & Co (Messrs Bowes, Hutt, Wood and Charles M. Palmer), later the Marley Hill Coal Company, then John Bowes & Partners Ltd, and from 1947 the National Coal Board. In 1894 Whellan reported that the daily output of coal was 530 tons, and 280 men and boys worked here. The coals were shipped at Jarrow (via the Bowes Railway).

The colliery owners erected a Primitive methodist chapel in 1869 - a "neat" stone building to seat 260 people, cost £400. In 1868 a Wesleyan chapel had been built, this cost only £165 as it was a plain stone structure. A colliery school was built in 1875 for 193 children. Nether Hall, the former home of the Greenwell family was let as tenements for miners, and part of it became a post office.