Mining & Screen

British mining has been filmed from two directions: by people recording a colliery because it was closing, and by people borrowing one because a pit is the most convincing place to set an underground story. Both leave a record of a real mine at a real date. This category collects film and television work with a specific, sourced connection to a named colliery, workforce or mining community — the mine that was filmed, not a general resemblance to industrial landscape.

Records

Above Us the Earth	Karl Francis filmed the closing of Ogilvie Colliery as it happened in 1975 and cut the footage together with staged scenes played by the men it was happening to. The result is a documentary drama that blames the National Coal Board and the unions in roughly equal measure, and is now held in the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales.
Billy Elliot	Stephen Daldry's 2000 film about a miner's son who takes up ballet during the 1984–85 strike, set in the fictional County Durham village of 'Everington' and shot mostly in Easington Colliery, with about 400 villagers as extras; with Easington's own pit closed, the mining scenes were filmed at Ellington and Lynemouth in Northumberland.
The Green Death	Doctor Who came to Ogilvie Colliery in March 1973 to film a story about a South Wales pit where miners die glowing green of chemical waste piped underground. The National Coal Board let the crew work the surface and ride the men's own cages down the shaft, two years before the colliery closed.

Mining and screen

Two ways a colliery reaches the screen

Ogilvie Colliery in the Darran valley was filmed twice in the last years of its life, and the two occasions are as different as the reasons for filming a mine can be. In March 1973 the BBC brought Doctor Who there to stand in for a fictional South Wales pit, and the National Coal Board let the crew work around the surface and ride the miners' own cages down the shaft. Two years later, as the Board closed the colliery for good, Karl Francis filmed the closure itself and the argument around it, using the men it was happening to alongside professional actors.

The distinction matters for what each is worth as a record. A drama that borrows a colliery preserves its surface and its working gear on a dated afternoon, whatever the story wrapped around it; a documentary made at a closure preserves what the people there said while it was happening. Both founding records of this category are attached to the same mine, and the mine outlived neither of them by long: Ogilvie closed in April 1975 and its ground is now a country park.

What this category admits

The bar is the archive's ordinary one. A named colliery, workforce or community, established from a source rather than inferred from scenery. A film set in an unnamed pit village does not qualify; a film shot at a named colliery, or about a named closure, does. Where a production used a mine as a location, the record says which mine, when, and what was filmed there, because that is the part this archive is for.

A third record: the village and the working pit

Billy Elliot (2000) added a third case in September 2026, and it combines both directions. Its story is set in the 1984–85 strike in a fictional County Durham pit village, which was filmed in Easington Colliery six years after that pit closed, with around 400 villagers as extras. Because Easington could no longer supply a working mine, the mining scenes were shot at Ellington and Lynemouth in Northumberland, and further scenes in Dawdon.

Sources

(secondary) Above Us the Earth (1977) — BFI Player
(secondary) Billy Elliot — Wikipedia
(secondary) Darran Valley Country Park (formerly Ogilvie Colliery) — The Locations Guide to Doctor Who
(secondary) Easington Colliery — Wikipedia
(secondary) The Green Death — Wikipedia

Category page created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026