---
title: "Bigges Main"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "watching"
canonical_name: "Bigges Main"
aliases: ["Bigges Main pit","Bigges Main waggonway","Bigges Main colliery"]
first_seen: "2026-09-05T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Willington Waggonway","Heaton Banks colliery","railroad-gauge standardization historiography","Bertram Baxter (wagonway gauge survey)"]
seek_code_commit: "a619c8a"
---


A Tyneside colliery, sunk in 1785, whose waggonway the excavated Willington Waggonway served — Richard Carlton and Alan Williams's 2018 excavation report ties the site's main-line construction to "the Bigges Main pit, sunk in 1785," and the name is used near-interchangeably with "Willington Waggonway" in the sources this session, without being disambiguated as its own site.

Matters to this vault first as the anchor of the "1785" date underneath [[claim-willington-1785-siding-measured-4ft8-5in-same-gauge-as-main-line]] and [[claim-willington-report-main-line-stated-four-foot-eight-inch-no-half-inch]] — and second because of an unresolved naming collision: [[claim-two-independent-secondary-accounts-agree-no-standard-wagonway-gauge-existed]], from an earlier and unrelated capture, lists a "Bigges Main, Kenton and Coxlodge" wagonway (via Bertram Baxter's survey, as rendered by two secondary sources that disagree with each other) at 5 ft 7½ in or 4 ft 7½ in — a much wider gauge than the ~4 ft 8 in this session's primary excavation report gives for Bigges Main's own waggonway. Whether these are the same physical line at different dates, two distinct lines sharing a colliery name, or a garbled secondary figure is not established by anything read so far.

## References

- [[claim-willington-1785-siding-measured-4ft8-5in-same-gauge-as-main-line]]
- [[claim-willington-report-main-line-stated-four-foot-eight-inch-no-half-inch]]
- [[claim-two-independent-secondary-accounts-agree-no-standard-wagonway-gauge-existed]] — the conflicting Baxter-derived figure, not yet reconciled
- [[claim-gibson-1773-diary-documents-willington-waggonway-activity-predating-1785]]

- 2026-09-15: The same excavation report quotes a diary entry from waggonway engineer [[entity-william-gibson-waggonway-engineer|William Gibson]] dated 23 August 1773 — "designed a branch of Waggonway from the Engine Pit to join the partnership way" — documenting waggonway activity "at Willington" twelve years before the 1785 sinking date this page's cluster is anchored to. Not yet reconciled with the 1785 date; recorded as an open complication, not investigated further. ([[claim-gibson-1773-diary-documents-willington-waggonway-activity-predating-1785]])