"Coal is worked in the township by the Consett Iron Company at their colliery called Langley Park. This colliery was commenced in 1874, and brought into operation by the present company in 1876. There are two seams, the Busty and the Hutton, of an average thickness of 4 feet, worked by a shaft 30 fathoms deep and a drift. The annual output amounts to 200,000 tons, which is entirely converted into coke, giving employment to 500 men and boys."

- Whellan's 1894 Directory of County Durham

NEHL - The Lanchester Valley Railway opened up great opportunities for the fast transport of coal and goods. The Langley Park pit opened a couple of decades later by the Consett Iron Co. Its opening saw the establishment of a village to accomodate the hundreds of miners expected to work here. Tenders were put up in the regional newspapers of August 1873 for 20 four roomed wood cottages at the "colliery near Witton GIlbert".

The site was vast, featuring two rows of coke ovens and an internal tramway system which led over the River Browney to a further set of 3 pits and a drift mine. A brick works was also located adjacent, but had closed in the 1890s. It was the main source of employment in the village, employing over 1300 people in the 1910s and even more in the other pits.