Along with the Low and High Hirst, Ashington was once part of the parish of the Barony of Bothal and consisted of nothing more than a farmhouse and cottages. In 1847, the first mining shaft was sunk in the present Ellington Road Ends, the first of many pits in the area. As pits opened in Woodhorn, Linton, Ellington and Lynemouth, miners came to Ashington from Cornwall, Cumberland and Durham, swelled by an influx of Irish folk desperate to escape the potato famine.

A strong community of miners sprang up, the town's population grew and Ashington was titled 'the biggest mining village in the world'. Since the 1950s, Ashington's black diamonds have lost some of their lure and the coalmines have closed one by one, leaving only the mine at Ellington operational. Through nearly 200 archive images, this book remembers the communities that emerged and then fought for their livelihood, and the people who shaped Ashington into what it is today.