MineArchiveAbout MineArchive
MineArchive is a curated reference catalogue of historic and abandoned mines across the UK. It gathers evidence that is usually scattered across geological surveys, mining societies, archives, academic papers and present-day records, and sets it out as one consistent record per mine.
A directory tells you a mine existed. A MineArchive record shows what is known about it and where each fact comes from: its history, workings, geology, operators, people, disasters and surviving remains, with sources cited alongside, disagreements kept visible, and gaps marked Unknown rather than filled. It is meant as a first stop, not the final authority.
2,451 mines and 874 disasters so far, each researched individually.
What the archive covers
Every mine record links out to the wider archive, so a mine can be read in context: where it sits, what it worked, who ran it and what went wrong there.
- Mines
- The core records: one page per mine.
- Regions and Map
- Where each mine is, to the precision the sources allow.
- Commodities
- What was extracted, from coal and lead to slate and tin.
- Operators and People
- The companies and individuals named in the sources, from owners and agents to the men and boys who died.
- Terms and Geology
- What a stope or a winze is, why coal lies in seams and how mineral veins form. A mine makes more sense once you know why it was built the way it was. These pages are linked from mine records where they help, not from every word.
- Disasters
- Explosions, fires, inundations, collapses and other major incidents, including those in workings long after closure. Recorded separately, filterable on their own and linked to the mines involved.
- Culture
- Music, sport, art, film, literature, folklore and the labour movement, wherever a source ties them to a particular mine or mining community.
- Fictional
- Mines from fiction, treated like real ones but sourced from the relevant canon, with adaptations told apart. They are clearly marked and kept out of the maps, statistics and data of the real archive. It is an archive of mines; whether a mine exists is, occasionally, a secondary detail.
How a mine reaches the archive
Every record is chosen and researched individually. Nothing is generated automatically, and nothing is published to reach a number.
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Candidate
A mine is noted with its name, region, commodity and a source or two, and waits until it is chosen.
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Selected
A candidate is chosen for full research, a few at a time.
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Researched
Sources are found and read, at least two of them naming the mine itself. The record is written from them, each statement tied to its source.
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Reviewed and published
The record goes live only if it meets the archive's minimum standard. Otherwise it stays unpublished.
The minimum standard is: two sources that name the mine, a sourced history of some substance, at least three sourced statements, and every field either written or marked Unknown. Published records are rechecked over time, and corrections are made where the evidence shows something was wrong.
How the evidence is handled
Records are built from published and specialist sources, with modern research tools helping to find and organise the material. Three kinds of source are used:
- Primary
- Records made at the time or by the responsible body: British Geological Survey mine plans, abandonment plans, inspectors' reports, official listings and government records.
- Specialist secondary
- The work of mining history societies, local historians, archives and academic researchers.
- Observational
- Dated photographs and published accounts of visits, showing what survived at a particular time.
The records keep three kinds of statement apart:
- Documented facts are stated by a source you can check, and cited.
- Reported claims are what a source says but others do not confirm. They are marked as such, not presented as fact.
- Observations describe a site as someone saw it on a given date. Sites change, so they are not treated as its present condition.
Where something cannot be established, the record says Unknown rather than inventing a precise answer. MineArchive does not replace the organisations and researchers whose work it draws on. Where they hold useful original material, the record links to it, and good sources are worth following.
When sources disagree
Conflicting accounts are kept and explained, not settled by quietly choosing the most convenient one. Pendarves Mine, for example, closed in 1984 by one account and after the tin crash of October 1985 by another; its record gives both.
Every open disagreement is gathered on the open questions page.
Images and licensing
MineArchive reproduces an image only when its licence permits commercial reuse: public domain, a Creative Commons licence that allows it, or MineArchive's own work. Each is credited with its creator, licence and source.
Where a useful image cannot be reused on those terms, the record links to it at its source instead.
Safety and responsible use
MineArchive documents a mine's history and general location. It does not give access routes, ways past fences, gates or grilles, or directions into workings. Descriptions of surviving remains are there as history, not as an invitation.
Many sites are on private land, and some are scheduled monuments or protected habitats.
Supporting MineArchive
MineArchive is a personal project and is intended to stay freely accessible. The priorities are simple:
- be a useful resource;
- pay for itself;
- perhaps buy me a curry once a month.
The site may therefore carry a small amount of advertising, which should never become more important than the material it sits beside.
Copyright and reuse
© 2026 MineArchive. Original content and database rights reserved. A great deal of work goes into researching and writing these records; please don't lift them and host them yourself.
- Researchers may quote reasonable extracts with attribution.
- Anyone may link freely to any record.
- Personal research exports are permitted.
- MineArchive's original writing, structure and compiled data may not be copied wholesale, republished or mirrored.
- Third-party images and quoted source material remain subject to their respective owners and licences.
Requests for broader reuse: .
Privacy and cookies
MineArchive sets a small number of cookies of its own so that the archive can be improved with some idea of how it is read: whether readers come back, how many pages a visit covers, which pages and search terms are popular and which controls on the map and the listings get used. These cookies have nothing to do with advertising: they are never used to choose or target adverts, and what they record is not shared with anyone.
| ma_v | A random visitor identifier, kept for twelve months. It says nothing about who you are; it only lets a later visit be recognised as a return. |
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| ma_s | A random visit identifier and page count, kept for thirty minutes after the last page. |
| ma_usage | Set only when you turn recording off, so the choice is remembered for two years. |
What is recorded with those identifiers: the page and time, the site that linked here, the window size, site search terms, filters and settings used, and how long a page was open. That goes into the web server's ordinary access log on this site's own server, alongside the IP address every server log holds, and is summarised into daily counts. No name, address or anything typed into a contact form is involved, and none of it is sold, shared or used to target anyone, on this site or elsewhere.
You can turn recording off here; the cookies are then removed and nothing more is sent. A browser that sends the Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal is treated as off without asking. The rest of the site works the same either way.
The Accessibility options and Settings choices are kept in your browser's local storage, not in cookies, and are never sent anywhere.
Contact
Corrections, sources I've missed, photographs and anything else useful are always welcome:
I do read everything, although replies may not always be immediate.
Found a security weakness in the site? Please read the disclosure note and report it quietly. The machine-readable version, with an OpenPGP key, is at /.well-known/security.txt.