Work has been going on to pump out the flood water

Production at Ellington Colliery in Northumberland has been at a standstill since thousands of gallons of water flooded the workings two weeks ago.

Senior managers from UK Coal visited the site on Wednesday, when they announced the pit is to close.

UK Coal said it had been forced to end production for safety reasons.

National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) chairman Ian Lavery said: "We went into the meeting with the chief executive of UK Coal and in less than three seconds he told us the colliery was closed because we couldn't successfully pump water from the face and it made it unsafe.

"It is absolutely ridiculous to play the safety card on an issue such as this."

UK Coal said millions of gallons of water had flooded the workings and round-the-clock pumping to lower levels had been unsuccessful.

The NUM was told of the closure on Wednesday morning

The firm says experts had estimated there could be more than 100 million gallons in old workings and the surrounding strata from which water could be seeping.

The company said 340 jobs would be lost with workers receiving payments relating to service and statutory requirements.

UK Coal chief executive Gerry Spindler: "The loss of any mine in these circumstances is a bitter blow, particularly for our employees and the local communities in which they live.

"However the safety of our employees is paramount. Whilst we have contained the flow, the face is flooded and mining adjacent reserves carries unacceptable levels of risk.

"We are left with no realistic option but to close the mine.

Geological problems

"We could not have asked for, or received more commitment that that given by the Ellington workforce and it is a great sadness that their attempt to maintain viable deep mine operations for some years to come have been so abruptly terminated."

The colliery was sunk between 1910 and 1913.

At the outbreak of World War I, the workforce was 800, but this soared to 1,200 in 1921 and to an all-time high of 2,179 at the time of the 1984 strike.

It was closed by previous operator British Coal in 1994 but then taken over by UK Coal, which was then RJB Mining, and resumed production in January 1995.

The threat of closure due to geological problems was averted in 2000 when UK Coal invested in equipment to control the geology, and again last year.

It said it had invested more than �8m in the site since 2001, much of it on equipment which will not be recovered from the flooded coal face. The colliery made losses of �11m in 2004.

Castle Morpeth Borough Council reacted with sadness and said it would be working with other agencies to help those made redundant and to look at the regeneration of the area.