Brierdene or Brier Dene is a small valley through which the Brierdene Burn flows down to its mouth at

Whitley Bay Whitley Bay is a seaside town in the North Tyneside borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It was formerly governed as part of Northumberland and has been part of Tyne and Wear since 1974. It is part of the wider Tyneside built-up area, being around ...

. The valley was partly occupied by a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

in the past of which very little is now visible. Part of the valley is now the Brierdene Community Green Space and the Brierdene Wildlife Site. The site is now home to more than 1000 identified organisms and includes an ecologically diverse meadow and is a designated

Site of Nature Conservation Importance Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI), Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) and regionally important geological site (RIGS) are designations used by local authorities in the United Kingdom for sites of substantive local nature ...

. Much of work of transforming the valley into a wildlife refuge was undertaken by a voluntary group - the Friends of Brierdene. This work earned them a

Queens Award for Voluntary Service The King's Award for Voluntary Service, previously known as The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, is an annual award given to groups in the voluntary sector of the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies. Until 2022, awardees were announce ...

. The name Brierdene was also used for a railway station built in 1914 but which was never brought into use. In April 2016 a new housing development at Backworth was started and adopted the name of Brierdene.

References

Whitley Bay Valleys of Tyne and Wear Valleys of Northumberland {{TyneandWear-geo-stub