MineArchiveDisasters
Explosions, floods, collapses and other major incidents at UK mines — including significant post-closure incidents in abandoned workings. Each record is researched to the same standard as a mine or terminology entry, not just a casualty count.
436 disasters.
| Disaster | Date | Type | Region | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abercarn colliery (Prince of Wales) explosion, 1878 A firedamp explosion tore through Prince of Wales Colliery (Abercarn Colliery) on 11 September 1878, killing 268 men and boys — the third-worst death toll in South Wales Coalfield history. |
11 September 1878 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 268 |
| Abercwmboi Colliery Explosion, 1870 On the night of 8 October 1870 an explosion of firedamp at the ventilating furnace of Abercwmboi (then Abercwmboy) Colliery, Aberdare, killed the overman James Davies and four other men. Gas had been found in the north return about midnight and the two fluemen were found asleep with the furnace fire nearly out; the officials chose to let the fire burn up rather than draw it, and a quarter of an hour after they went towards the Six Feet the pit fired. The coroner's jury at the Boot Hotel, Aberdare, found the fluemen very culpable for letting the fire go so low, a verdict amounting to accidental death. |
8 October 1870 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 5 |
| Abercynon Colliery Haulage Accident, 1906 On the afternoon of Saturday 28 April 1906, about fifteen minutes before the end of the shift, a journey of twenty-four full trams of coal ran away underground at Abercynon Colliery and into the men waiting at the pit bottom to go up. Five were killed and at least six seriously injured. |
28 April 1906 | Haulage / Transport | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 5 |
| Abercynon Colliery Shaft Accident, 1895 Six sinkers were killed at Abercynon Colliery on 9 September 1895 when the bowk they were riding struck a projection in the shaft and they were precipitated to the bottom. |
9 September 1895 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 6 |
| Abercynon Colliery Sinking Accident, 1893 Eight sinkers were killed by a fall while the shafts of Abercynon Colliery — then the Dowlais Cardiff Colliery — were being sunk on 23 January 1893. A ninth man, David Jones, died a month later of injuries from the same fall. |
23 January 1893 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 8 |
| Aberfan disaster, 1966 A saturated colliery waste tip above the village of Aberfan collapsed as a liquefied slurry on the morning of 21 October 1966, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and nearby houses and killing 144 people, 116 of them children — one of the deadliest disasters in British history and a direct consequence of how the colliery's own waste tips had been sited and managed. |
21 October 1966 | Surface / Tip Failure | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 144 |
| Agecroft Colliery shaft accident, 1859 Seven men and boys were drawn against the winding pulley and fell down the shaft at Agecroft Colliery on 4 January 1859, after a shaft-position indicator's signal band slipped loose and the engineman, with no other way to judge the cage's position, relied on hearing the signal bell alone. |
4 January 1859 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Greater Manchester | 7 |
| Albion Colliery explosion, 1894 A firedamp and coal-dust explosion tore through Albion Colliery on 23 June 1894, killing 290 men and boys — the second-worst death toll of any British colliery disaster after Senghenydd in 1913. |
23 June 1894 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 290 |
| Alderley Edge West Mine deaths Two men, George Etchells and Alfred Hadfield, died after going into the disused West Mine and losing their way in its passages; their bodies were not found for three months. |
May 1929 | Other | Cheshire | 2 |
| Allerton Bywater Colliery explosion, 1930 At about half past nine on the morning of Monday 10 March 1930, a deputy at Allerton Bywater Colliery fired his tenth shot of the shift into a place where firedamp had gathered in explosive proportions. The explosion, worsened by coal dust, killed five men and a pit pony. The inquest found no negligence, but noted that the face had not been thoroughly treated with inert dust and that the shot-firing dynamo in use should not have been. |
10 March 1930 | Explosion | West Yorkshire | 5 |
| Alps Quarry Fall of Stone, 1889 At around midday on 15 August 1889 three men were killed at Alps Quarry, Wenvoe, while boring a shot hole about ten feet from the quarry face. Large boulders came down on them and they fell some sixty feet to the quarry bottom, where they were crushed. The inquest at Cardiff returned a verdict of accidental death. |
15 August 1889 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Vale of Glamorgan | 3 |
| Alvecote Colliery Cage Accident A cage ran out of control during its descent at Alvecote Colliery in 1919, killing one man and seriously injuring eighteen others; the Inspector of Mines put the cause down to management's neglect of machinery maintenance, and new screens and a new cage system followed. |
1919 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Warwickshire | 1 |
| Annagher Pit fireball, 1898 Coal had been coming out of the new Annagher pit for barely a month when, shortly after one o'clock on 29 September 1898, gas ignited sixty metres down and engulfed four miners in a fireball. Three died. Two men who went back down after them were decorated for it, one with the Royal Humane Society's highest award. |
29 September 1898 | Explosion | County Tyrone | 3 |
| Annesley Colliery fire and afterdamp Seven men died of carbon monoxide poisoning at Annesley Colliery while working to reach and remove the seat of a fire that had been sealed behind a stopping since May. Some were killed going back in after the others. |
26–27 June 1877 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Nottinghamshire | 7 |
| Apedale Colliery Explosion, 1878 An explosion at the No. 1 Burley Pit of Apedale Colliery, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, killed twenty-three men and boys — the worse of two major explosions to strike the pit within a decade. |
27 March 1878 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 23 |
| Apedale Colliery Explosion, 1885 A second major explosion at Apedale Colliery's Burley Pit, seven years after the 1878 disaster, killed nine men. |
20 June 1885 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 9 |
| Arkwright Town Methane Evacuation, 1988 Methane rising from the abandoned workings of Arkwright Colliery was found at explosive levels in the terraces of Arkwright Town six months after the pit closed; 110 people from 56 homes were evacuated for a fortnight, a pump was set in the old shaft, and British Coal eventually rebuilt the entire village on a new site and opencast the old one away. |
9 November 1988 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Derbyshire | 0 |
| Astley Green Colliery explosion, 1939 A firedamp explosion struck Astley Green Colliery in the early hours of 7 June 1939 while men fought an underground fire over a mile from the pit bottom, killing five men including the pit manager and injuring four more; mines rescue teams were themselves driven back by further explosions. |
7 June 1939 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 5 |
| Auchengeich Colliery explosion, 1931 An explosion tore through the night shift in No. 2 Pit — the Round Pit — at Auchengeich Colliery in the early hours of 22 January 1931. Five men were killed outright and a sixth died the next day. Five others who had escaped unhurt went straight back in to look for them and were themselves overcome by gas. |
22 January 1931 | Explosion | North Lanarkshire | 6 |
| Auchengeich Colliery fire, 1959 A fire in an underground booster fan filled the return airway of Auchengeich Colliery with carbon monoxide, and a man-riding train carrying 48 miners was sent into it. Forty-seven died; one man walked out. It remains the worst mining disaster in 20th-century Scotland. |
18 September 1959 | Fire | North Lanarkshire | 47 |
| Auchenharvie Colliery inrush, 1895 At about three in the afternoon on 2 August 1895, water burst out of old workings into the rise of Auchenharvie's No. 4 Pit and swept down the inclines to the shaft and on into the dook. Nine people drowned, four of them brothers and two of them children. Five more were entombed behind a blockage and dug out alive two days later. |
2 August 1895 | Flooding / Inundation | North Ayrshire | 9 |
| Auchinraith Colliery explosion A shot fired in the Black Band section of No. 1 pit ignited firedamp on a Saturday morning. Five men were killed outright, a sixth died the next day, and nine more were burned. Fifteen men had been at work in the section; the rest of the pit knew nothing until afterwards. |
30 August 1930 | Explosion | South Lanarkshire | 6 |
| Auckland Park Colliery Shaft Accident, 1863 Four sinkers were killed at the South Pit of Auckland Park Colliery on 12 September 1863 when the half cradle they were working from overbalanced. Seven men were on it, connecting cast-iron pipes to the tubbing; several went to one side to lift a heavy pipe, their weight tipped the cradle, and four of them fell about 51 fathoms into five feet of water at the bottom of the shaft. The cradle swung back level and the other three were unhurt. |
12 September 1863 | Winding / Shaft Accident | County Durham | 4 |
| Auldhouseburn Colliery inundation, 1898 Men cross-cutting eastward in the Bankhead pit of Auldhouseburn Colliery holed into the flooded workings of the long-abandoned Crossflat pit on the morning of Friday 11 March 1898. The water rose twelve feet in the shaft and cut off nineteen men in the steep rise workings above the main roadway. Three who had been working near the roadway and had time to act on the warning were overwhelmed and drowned. The other sixteen were brought out alive the next morning after a night and a day underground, led by the fireman Robert Blyth, who stayed with them and then swam the flooded roadway neck-deep to ring the pit bell. |
11 March 1898 | Flooding / Inundation | East Ayrshire | 3 |
| Baddesley Colliery Explosion An underground fire, started by an unprotected steam boiler installed in the return airway, trapped nine night-shift men in the deep workings at Baddesley Colliery. The rescue effort ran for fourteen hours before a gas explosion killed twenty-three of the men attempting it, among them the colliery's owner. Thirty-two died in all. |
1 May 1882 | Explosion | Warwickshire | 32 |
| Bamfurlong Colliery fire, 1892 Between 7.15 and 7.30 a.m. on 14 December 1892 a paraffin torch set fire to a timber-floored compressed-air engine house on the main intake of Bamfurlong Colliery, near Wigan, and the ventilating current carried the smoke into the workings. Seventy-three men escaped by the return airway, but sixteen men and boys tried to get out through the smoke and suffocated. The regular engine boy was ill and a boy of thirteen had been sent in his place. |
14 December 1892 | Fire | Greater Manchester | 16 |
| Bardykes Colliery Roof Fall, 1936 A very large fall of roof in the loading gate of a conveyor run in the Splint Seam at Bardykes Colliery killed five men and a pony on the evening of Saturday 21 March 1936. |
21 March 1936 | Collapse / Roof Fall | South Lanarkshire | 5 |
| Barnburgh Main Colliery explosion, 1957 A firedamp explosion at 3pm on 26 June 1957 in the Newhill seam's North West 1 District at Barnburgh Main Colliery killed six men and injured fourteen others, after a shot-firing blast brought down a stone that damaged a power cable, producing a flash that ignited gas escaping from a break in the roof 73 yards away. |
26 June 1957 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 6 |
| Barrow Colliery gas outburst, 1911 A sudden outburst of gas through a borehole overcame the manager and three men driving a roadway to release an accumulation of gas at Barrow Colliery; the three men died. Collier George Edwards was awarded the Edward Medal, 2nd Class, for repeated attempts to reach them. |
22 July 1911 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Bridgend | 3 |
| Barrow Colliery shaft accident, 1874 Five masons and sinkers drowned when a scaffold platform collapsed and dropped them 30 feet into the flooded sump of a shaft then being sunk for the new Barrow pits at Bryncethin, after a cast-iron crab winch failed. |
26 September 1874 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Bridgend | 5 |
| Bartonholm Colliery explosion, 1871 At about three on Monday morning, 30 October 1871, Thomas McQuade went down No. 3 Bartonholm Pit near Irvine to light the ventilation furnace, the 'cube', which he was said to have neglected the day before. He carried a Davy lamp and a naked one, and twelve miners went with him. At the end of the main roadway a strong blast of firedamp met his open light and exploded. McQuade and the three men behind him were killed; the Hamilton Advertiser counted a fifth. |
30 October 1871 | Explosion | North Ayrshire | 4 |
| Bedford Colliery Explosion, 1886 A firedamp explosion at Bedford No. 2 Pit, Leigh, on Friday 13 August 1886 killed 38 men and boys. The inquest established that a miner drawing pit props had seen firedamp in his lamp and not reported it, and that a second miner, finding his own lamp firing, shook it instead of lowering it and carrying it out. |
13 August 1886 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 38 |
| Bedwas Navigation Colliery Explosion, 1912 An underground explosion at Bedwas Navigation Colliery on 27 March 1912, within weeks of the pit raising its first coal, badly injured twelve men, three of whom died. The cause was attributed to a spark from the colliery's electric signalling system. |
27 March 1912 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 3 |
| Bedwellty Pits Explosion, 1865 An explosion at the No. 1 pit of Bedwellty Pits near Tredegar on 16 June 1865 killed twenty-seven miners, six of them boys under sixteen. It was reported to the country in the Illustrated London News, which printed engravings both of the colliery and of the colliers' funeral. |
16 June 1865 | Explosion | Blaenau Gwent | 27 |
| Bentley Colliery explosion, 1931 A firedamp explosion in the North-East District of Bentley Colliery's Barnsley seam killed 45 men and boys on the evening of 20 November 1931, most likely ignited by a gob fire smouldering in the mine's old workings; the rescue that followed brought eight Edward Medals. |
20 November 1931 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 45 |
| Bentley Colliery manrider derailment, 1978 An underground manriding train carrying 65 miners derailed after running away down an incline at Bentley Colliery on 21 November 1978, killing seven men and injuring many more. |
21 November 1978 | Haulage / Transport | South Yorkshire | 7 |
| Bersham Colliery explosion A shot fired into the coal at the far end of No. 2 West Level on the evening of 3 August 1880 ignited a blower. The colliers tried to brush it out with brattice cloth, failed, and went up for the manager. He came down with eight others to seal the district off, and partly opened an air door to clear the smoke. That cut the ventilation to the North Level, gas built up quickly and reached the flames. Nine of the nine men who had gone down died. |
3 August 1880 | Explosion | Wrexham | 9 |
| Bersham Colliery explosion, 1909 A shot fired at the far end of the No.2 West Level ignited a pocket of firedamp at Bersham Colliery on 3 August 1909, killing eight men. |
3 August 1909 | Explosion | Wrexham | 8 |
| Bickershaw Colliery explosion, 1942 An explosion in No.4 pit's Rise Unit, probably caused by spontaneous combustion igniting gas in sealed-off old workings, killed 6 men shortly before midnight on 5 January 1942. |
5-6 January 1942 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 6 |
| Bickershaw Colliery explosion, 1959 Carbon monoxide from an explosion in an abandoned district of the Plodder Seam killed 5 men at Bickershaw Colliery on 10 October 1959. |
10 October 1959 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 5 |
| Bickershaw Colliery shaft accident, 1932 An overwound cage carrying 20 men plunged through the bottom of Bickershaw's No.3 shaft into a water-filled sump on 10 October 1932, drowning 19 of them in one of British mining's worst shaft accidents. |
10 October 1932 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Greater Manchester | 19 |
| Big Pit explosion (1908) A localised underground explosion killed three men. |
11 December 1908 | Explosion | Torfaen | 3 |
| Big Pit fire (1913) Three men died in a fire near the underground stables while trying to rescue the pit ponies stabled there; the horses survived. |
7 April 1913 | Fire | Torfaen | 3 |
| Bilsthorpe Colliery Explosions (1934) Two separate firedamp explosions three hours apart in the North West No. 6 district killed nine men and injured a further forty. |
26 July 1934 | Explosion | Nottinghamshire | 9 |
| Bilsthorpe Colliery Piping Collapse (1927) A burst water pipe brought roughly 100 tons of shattered ironwork crashing down the sinking shaft, killing fourteen men working below. |
1 March 1927 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Nottinghamshire | 14 |
| Bilsthorpe Colliery Roof Collapse (1993) A roof collapse caused by unsafe roof bolting killed three men nearly 2,000 feet underground as they drove a tunnel toward a new coal seam; an under-manager was posthumously awarded the George Medal for warning his colleagues. |
18 August 1993 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Nottinghamshire | 3 |
| Birchenwood Colliery Explosion, 1925 An explosion at the No. 18 pit of Birchenwood Colliery, Kidsgrove, on 18 December 1925 killed seven men and seriously injured fourteen others. The colliery had changed hands six months earlier, passing from the Birchenwood Colliery Company to Kidsgrove Collieries Limited. |
18 December 1925 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 7 |
| Birley East Colliery Explosion, 1924 An explosion at Birley East Colliery on 23 February 1924 killed four men and injured four others. Two of the dead were father and son, Herbert and Ernest Roper of Rainbow Forge, Hackenthorpe. |
23 February 1924 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 4 |
| Birley Vale Colliery Explosion, 1876 Six men died on the morning of 26 June 1876 when colliers carrying naked lights fired gas that had gathered in an exploring heading at Birley Vale Colliery near Sheffield. The men had been using locked safety lamps until two days earlier, when the under-viewer reported the ventilation improved and the manager left the choice of lights to his discretion. Neither he nor the fireman had walked to the end of the heading. The Yorkshire jury returned manslaughter against the fireman. |
26 June 1876 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 6 |
| Black Vein Colliery explosion, 1846 On 14 January 1846 the naked flame of a candle fired a pocket of firedamp in one district of the Black Vein Pit at Risca, killing 35 men and boys, most of them suffocated by the afterdamp. Men working elsewhere in the pit felt only a strong current of air. It was the first of the explosions that earned the colliery its name as the death pit. |
14 January 1846 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 35 |
| Black Vein Colliery explosion, 1853 In March 1853 firedamp exploded at the entrance to No. 13 in the Black Vein Pit at Risca, about half a mile from the pit bottom. Seven were killed at once, among them boys of twelve and thirteen, and three more men died later of their injuries, ten in all. The inquest blamed one of the injured men for using a naked candle, and a ventilation door left open. It was one of the explosions that made the colliery known as the death pit. |
March 1853 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 10 |
| Black Vein Colliery explosion, 1860 At about 9.30 a.m. on Saturday 1 December 1860 firedamp exploded in the fourth east level of the Black Vein Pit at Risca. The blast brought down great falls that cut off the ventilation, and most of the victims were killed by the afterdamp trapped behind them. More than 140 men and boys died, the worst British mining disaster recorded to that date, and the last body was not brought out until February 1861. The inquest jury found the gas had been given off suddenly in a group of stalls but could not say how it was fired; the company was wound up. |
1 December 1860 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 146 |
| Blackrod Colliery explosion, 1836 On 6 October 1836 firedamp exploded in Mr Blundell's pit at Blackrod, near Bolton, soon after the fireman, Thomas Challender, had made his inspection and let the men down. The pit was worked with safety lamps, but naked lights were taken in as well. Twelve died, the fireman among them, and five of the dead were women and girls, the youngest ten. Inquests under three coroners returned accidental death. |
6 October 1836 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 12 |
| Blaenclydach Colliery spake runaway, 1941 At about seven on the morning of 25 November 1941 the spake, the man-riding train of seated drams carrying about ninety men and boys into the 500-yard Abergorchy drift at Blaenclydach Colliery, ran out of control and careered two hundred yards before it was stopped. Men who jumped were thrown back under it in the narrow drift. Seven were killed, two of them fifteen-year-olds, and many more injured. |
25 November 1941 | Haulage / Transport | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 7 |
| Blaengwawr Colliery Explosion, 1861 Firedamp exploded in the four-feet workings of Blaengwawr Colliery at Aberaman at about twenty past seven on the morning of Friday 8 March 1861, killing thirteen men and boys and seriously injuring seven more. Between 250 and 300 were underground. The inquest found the gas had accumulated because a ventilation door between two cross-headings had been left open by a person unknown, and asked that safety lamps be used throughout the colliery as the Government Inspector had already recommended. |
8 March 1861 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 13 |
| Blaenhirwaun Colliery explosion, 1955 At about 1 p.m. on 6 September 1955 a sudden blower of firedamp from the roof of the Q face at Blaenhirwaun Colliery near Cross Hands was drawn through a small compressed-air fan ventilating a ripping lip, and sparks from its blades striking pieces of stone set it off. Flame swept the face and supply gate. Four men were killed and two more died of their burns later that month; thirteen were injured, nine badly burned. |
6 September 1955 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 6 |
| Blairmuckhill Colliery explosion, 1915 On 27 March 1915 the under-manager of Blairmuckhill, James Hawson, took two mining contractors below to show them a stretch of face they might tender for. At the pit bottom the fireman told him the section had not yet been inspected as the statute required; Hawson said he would inspect it himself and led the two men down the dook, a safety lamp in his hand and a naked lamp burning in his cap, the contractors with naked lights too. A short way in the gas fired, putting out every lamp and burning all three. Hawson died the next day and Richard Sommerville a week later; Charles Stewart was badly burned. The Court of Session refused Hawson's widow compensation on the ground that he had brought the peril on himself. |
27 March 1915 | Explosion | North Lanarkshire | 2 |
| Blantyre Colliery Explosion, 1879 A second firedamp explosion at Dixon's Blantyre No. 1 pit, less than two years after the catastrophic 1877 disaster at the same colliery group, killed 28 men and boys. |
2 July 1879 | Explosion | South Lanarkshire | 28 |
| Blantyre Mining Disaster A firedamp explosion tore through Pits No. 2 and No. 3 of William Dixon's colliery at High Blantyre on the morning of 22 October 1877, killing 207 men and boys -- the worst mining disaster in Scottish history. |
22 October 1877 | Explosion | South Lanarkshire | 207 |
| Blidworth Colliery Cage Collision (1943) Three men cleaning water garlands from a scaffold mounted on a descending cage were killed when the shaft's two cages collided for an unexplained reason. |
Sunday night, 6 June 1943 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Nottinghamshire | 3 |
| Bold Colliery shaft accident, 1905 A cage carrying men down the shaft at Bold Colliery, St Helens, descended too rapidly on 20 January 1905, overshooting the Yard Mine level and crashing onto a sinking platform thirty yards below, killing five miners and seriously injuring fourteen more. |
20 January 1905 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Merseyside | 5 |
| Boosbeck subsidence, 1883 Pillar extraction beneath the ironstone-mining village of Boosbeck caused widespread ground subsidence from mid-1883, damaging up to 200 houses across several streets; a 1884 court finding of improper working ruined the landowner and hastened the mine's own closure within a few years. No deaths or injuries are recorded. |
from July 1883 | Other | North Yorkshire | 0 |
| Botallack Mine shaft accident The chain hauling a man-carriage up the Boscawen Diagonal Shaft broke; the carriage ran back out of control and struck timber at the bottom, killing all nine men and boys aboard. |
18 April 1863 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Cornwall | 9 |
| Bothwell Castle Colliery shaft accident, 1889 An engineman's failure to shut off steam in time sent a descending cage crashing into its seat at Bothwell Castle Colliery's No. 2 pit on 28 June 1889, killing five miners. |
28 June 1889 | Winding / Shaft Accident | South Lanarkshire | 5 |
| Boulby Mine gas blowout, 2016 Miner John Anderson, 56, was killed at Boulby Mine on 17 June 2016 by a sudden, powerful release of trapped gas — a 'gas blowout' around 15 metres across that displaced an estimated 1,000 tonnes of mineral, described by one expert witness as the biggest such blowout he had ever seen. It followed a separate fire at the mine only two months earlier that had injured seven workers. |
17 June 2016 | Other | North Yorkshire | 1 |
| Boulby Mine underground fire, 2016 A fire involving polystyrene blocks broke out 1,100m below the sea bed and around 8km from land at Boulby potash mine in the early hours of 13 April 2016; eleven workers were found by the mine rescue team, seven of them treated in hospital for smoke inhalation and shock before being discharged the same day. No deaths. |
13 April 2016 | Fire | North Yorkshire | 0 |
| Bowhill Colliery disaster, 1931 A firedamp explosion and the afterdamp that followed it killed ten men working in the Dunfermline Splint seam at Bowhill Colliery, Cardenden, on 31 October 1931 — one of the worst disasters in the history of the Fife coalfield. |
31 October 1931 | Explosion | Fife | 10 |
| Brayton Domain Colliery Explosion, 1915 At about eleven in the morning on 26 April 1915, a shot of gelignite was fired into an almost entirely undermined rib of coal in the Yard Band seam of Brayton Domain No. 4 Colliery, next to a goaf whose condition nobody had checked. The gas in it exploded. Seven of the eight men at work in the district died of their burns over the following weeks, among them the deputy and shotfirer himself. |
26 April 1915 | Explosion | Cumbria | 7 |
| Brereton Colliery Explosion Seven men and boys were killed by an explosion of firedamp in one of the shafts of the Brereton collieries near Rugeley on 6 February 1861. A fault had been struck, water had flooded the lower seams and had risen far enough, a few days earlier, to cut the connection between the two shafts and so end the ventilation of the sump. The managers knew it and did nothing. Gas gathered under the scaffold covering the sump, escaped as dirt was cleared from it and fired at a workman's candle. Two men were found in the sump and five more, suffocated by afterdamp, in the workings near the shaft. The colliery had no artificial ventilation of any kind. |
6 February 1861 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 7 |
| Brereton Colliery Inrush Water from a water-bearing stratum broke into the dip workings of the Coppice Pit at Brereton Collieries on 15 February 1908, drowning three men; a month later the bodies still lay entombed, management's efforts having gone entirely into keeping the main workings dry rather than recovering them. |
15 February 1908 | Flooding / Inundation | Staffordshire | 3 |
| Britannia Colliery compressed-air main explosion, 1938 On 10 April 1938 the main compressed-air pipe supplying Powell Duffryn's Rhymney Valley collieries burst while three men were repairing a joint beside Britannia Colliery, Pengam. The foreman boilermaker John Hammersley and the welder Roland Bond were killed outright and the fitter Frank Jones was seriously injured. |
10 April 1938 | Machinery | Caerphilly | 2 |
| Broadoak Colliery explosion, 1897 An explosion at Broadoak Colliery, Loughor, killed five men on the morning of 5 January 1897, after the night-shift fireman's own safety lamp was found to have been opened; a jury found no culpable negligence. |
5 January 1897 | Explosion | Swansea | 5 |
| Bromley Colliery Drowning Disaster (1913) A cotter pin worked loose in the winding gear, sending a cage 60 yards down the shaft; all three men aboard survived the fall itself but drowned in standing water before rescue. |
7 November 1913 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Somerset | 3 |
| Brookhouse Colliery Overwind, 1958 An overwind in the No. 1 downcast shaft at Brookhouse Colliery injured 36 of the 44 men in a descending cage, after excessive winding speed went unchecked by faulty braking and an improperly equipped automatic safety device. |
4 March 1958 | Winding / Shaft Accident | South Yorkshire | 0 |
| Bryncoch Colliery inundation, 1859 A few hours into the shift on Wednesday 6 April 1859 water from a large area of old workings broke into the Main Colliery at Bryncoch, near Neath, with about eighty men and boys underground. More than fifty ran before the flood to the shaft; twenty-six did not get out, among them the overman, who was washed away trying to warn them. Pumping took five or six months, and the first body was not recovered until 23 September; four were never found. |
6 April 1859 | Flooding / Inundation | Neath Port Talbot | 26 |
| Bryndu Colliery explosion, 1852 One Thursday morning in November 1852 three men and a youth at Bryndu Colliery, Kenfig Hill, went into their workings with candles before the fireman had examined them with a safety lamp for firedamp gathered in the night. The gas exploded at once and killed all four, the youngest a boy of twelve. |
November 1852 | Explosion | Bridgend | 4 |
| Bryndu Colliery explosion, 1853 Two days before Christmas 1853 John Williams, a collier of forty-one, went against orders into a part of Bryndu Colliery known to be gassy. His naked light fired the gas, and the explosion killed him, his eleven-year-old son Rees and three others. It was the colliery's second fatal explosion at a naked light in thirteen months. |
23 December 1853 | Explosion | Bridgend | 5 |
| Bryndu Colliery explosion, 1858 At about five in the afternoon on 27 or 28 May 1858 firedamp exploded in the West Nine Feet heading of Bryndu Colliery, Kenfig Hill, killing eleven or twelve men, the colliery's worst disaster and its third fatal explosion in six years. The coal there was so hard it had to be blasted, and the fireman, Jenkin Lewis, who was among the dead, is believed to have unlocked his safety lamp to light a fuse. |
May 1858 | Explosion | Bridgend | 12 |
| Bryngwiog Lead Mine Inundation, 1862 On Saturday 22 February 1862, water from old workings broke into the Bryngwiog lead mine on Halkyn Mountain in Flintshire and sixteen men were drowned. The dead came from villages scattered across the mountain — Moel-y-Crio, Lixwm, Rhewl, Rhesycae, Foel, Llaneurgain and Cilcen. |
22 February 1862 | Flooding / Inundation | Flintshire | 16 |
| Bryngwiog Mine inrush, 1862 Sixteen men drowned when Bryngwiog Mine, on Halkyn Mountain, broke into the flooded old workings of the abandoned Hendre Mine and filled with water within minutes — one of the worst disasters in the district's lead-mining history. |
February 1862 | Flooding / Inundation | Flintshire | 16 |
| Brynlliw Colliery roof fall, 1963 At the end of the day shift on Friday 10 May 1963 the roof came in over twenty feet at the gate end of the S2 face at Brynlliw Colliery near Gorseinon, after a week of squeezing. Four colliers were killed. The undermanager, buried with them, survived by building a pack wall of stones around himself while rescuers dug in from both sides. The Minister of Power promised inquiries in the Commons the following Monday. |
10 May 1963 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Swansea | 4 |
| Bullcroft Colliery Explosion, 1941 Six men were killed outright by an ignition of gas at Bullcroft Colliery just after three in the morning on 19 October 1941. They were about 430 feet from the shaft bottom, and all but one were members of the mine rescue team, at work on problems within the mine. |
19 October 1941 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 6 |
| Bunker's Hill Colliery Explosion, 1875 About one in the afternoon of 30 April 1875 a shot fired in a heading at Bunker's Hill Colliery near Talke ignited firedamp and killed forty-three men and boys. Everyone underground in that part of the pit died, so the cause had to be reconstructed afterwards. The inspector's report said the explosion was caused by the use of gunpowder and that the reason for the change from wedging to blasting had been simply that the owner could not compete with neighbours who blasted. |
30 April 1875 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 43 |
| Burngrange Oil Shale Mine explosion and fire, 1947 An open acetylene cap lamp ignited firedamp underground at Burngrange Oil Shale Mine on the evening of 10 January 1947, triggering an explosion and fire that killed 15 of the 53 men underground that shift — the greatest single loss of life in the history of Scotland's shale oil industry. |
10 January 1947 | Explosion | Midlothian | 15 |
| Burradon Colliery Explosion Seventy-six men and boys were killed at Burradon Colliery on the afternoon of Friday 2 March 1860. A first, smaller explosion in the southern workings sent the boys running for the shaft; twenty minutes later, as the overman William Kirkley led a party back in, a far larger one blew debris clean out of the shaft. Twenty-five men and boys were found together three hundred yards in, thirteen of them hand in hand, all dead of suffocation. The inquest ran to 18 April and failed to reach a conclusive verdict. |
2 March 1860 | Explosion | Northumberland | 76 |
| Bwllfa Colliery Fire (1867) A ventilation-system fire at Bwllfa Colliery filled an underground drift with smoke during a shift change on 27 December 1867, killing five of the eleven men working there. |
27 December 1867 | Fire | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 5 |
| Bwllfa Dare Colliery Sinking Explosion (1874) Two sinkers were killed and a third badly injured when they ignited gas blowers while sinking a new shaft at Bwllfa Dare Colliery, Cwmdare, on 18 May 1874. |
18 May 1874 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Cadder Colliery fire Fire broke out underground in No. 15 pit while the Sunday back shift was working. Twenty-two of the twenty-six men below died, most of them from smoke and gas. Four got out through the connection to No. 17, one of them found alive after nineteen hours. |
3 August 1913 | Fire | East Dunbartonshire | 22 |
| Cadean Slant manrider accident A link in the second shackle of the manrider train broke as the day shift rode out of the Cadean Slant at Trimsaran, 850 yards inside the drift. The side chains meant to hold the carriages failed too, nine carriages and the tool tram ran back down the slope and crashed into the side of a heading, bringing down the roof. Ten of the 103 men aboard were killed. |
26 April 1923 | Haulage / Transport | Carmarthenshire | 10 |
| Cadeby Main Colliery disaster, 1912 A firedamp explosion at Cadeby Main Colliery in the early hours of 9 July 1912 killed 35 men outright, with three more later dying of their injuries; a second explosion that same day killed 53 members of the rescue party sent to recover the dead, bringing the total death toll to 91 — one of the worst mining disasters in British history. |
9 July 1912 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 91 |
| Cadzow Colliery Gas Incident, 1929 A fireman and two miners were overcome and killed by gas at Cadzow Colliery, Hamilton, after going in to examine a place where a shot had just been fired on 10 October 1929. |
10 October 1929 | Gas / Asphyxiation | South Lanarkshire | 3 |
| Caedean Slant explosion, 1909 In the early hours of 22 October 1909 gas exploded in the Caedean slant at Trimsaran, near Kidwelly, among eight men cutting a new airway through the coal. The colliery had recently been flooded, and the airway was meant to improve poor ventilation and help clear the water. The gas was thought to have been fired by a spark from an electric pump motor nearby. All eight were burnt. Four died over the following week: Owen Thomas, Ted Darke, and two collier's boys of sixteen, John Williams and David Sparry. |
22 October 1909 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 4 |
| Califat Colliery Inundation, 1863 In October 1863 water from the old workings of the Limby Hall Colliery burst into the Califat mine in Swannington, Leicestershire, and three men were killed: Thomas Bird, a pit deputy, Henry Clements and Jeremiah Rose. A memorial to them stands near the Alabama engine house complex on the mine site. |
October 1863 | Flooding / Inundation | Leicestershire | 3 |
| Cambrian Colliery explosion, 1905 A firedamp explosion at Cambrian Colliery's No.1 pit in Clydach Vale killed 35 men on the night of 10 March 1905, apparently ignited when a bratticeman's safety lamp broke against falling rock; a five-day underground fire that followed prevented any further rescue. |
10 March 1905 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 35 |
| Cambrian Colliery explosion, 1965 A firedamp explosion at Cambrian Colliery, caused by an electrical arc igniting gas that had built up after a ventilation structure was left open for over two hours, killed 30 men on 17 May 1965 — the last major mining disaster in South Wales history. |
17 May 1965 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 30 |
| Camerton Colliery explosion Two men were killed by an underground explosion at Camerton New Pit. The cause was a mystery at first; it was eventually proved that shot-firing had ignited coal dust suspended in the pit’s atmosphere — one of the first three explosions in Britain attributed to coal dust alone, all of them in the Somerset field. |
14 November 1893 | Explosion | Somerset | 2 |
| Caprington Colliery Inrush At 11.45 on the night of 10 December 1909 the roof of abandoned stoop-and-room workings in the Ell coal at Caprington Colliery, near Kilmarnock, gave way under a field that had flooded from the River Irvine. Water and gravel poured into the old workings, found their way to No. 41 pit and ran down the shaft, driving accumulated black damp in front of them. Of the sixteen people below ground, five escaped through the new air pit after raking out the ventilation furnace that blocked their way, and one was carried by the flood into the winding shaft and came out on top of the cage. The other ten drowned. The surface cover over the abandoned seam was about eighteen feet. |
10 December 1909 | Flooding / Inundation | East Ayrshire | 10 |
| Carberry Colliery fall of coal, 1924 At half past one on the afternoon of 6 August 1924, in the seventh hour of the shift, a fall of coal in the Jewel seam at Carberry Colliery near Musselburgh killed three miners, John (or James) Morrison, William Purvis and James Urquhart, the eldest fifty-eight. Nothing more about the circumstances is recorded in the sources read. |
6 August 1924 | Collapse / Roof Fall | East Lothian | 3 |
| Cardowan Colliery explosion, 1932 A firedamp explosion, triggered when a shot was fired into coal already loosened by an earlier shot, killed 11 men at Cardowan Colliery's dip side face on 16 November 1932. |
16 November 1932 | Explosion | North Lanarkshire | 11 |
| Cardowan Colliery explosion, 1960 Shortly before 7 p.m. on 25 July 1960, as a party led by the Group Manager and the District Inspector came away from clearing an airway over a roof fall on No. 4 East face at Cardowan, firedamp exploded behind them and flame swept the intake. The district had been sealed for six months after a fire. Three men working on the gas drainage pipes in the return were killed and seven were burned, one of whom died a week later. The Deputy Chief Inspector concluded that half-burned coal had reheated once fresh air reached it. |
25 July 1960 | Explosion | North Lanarkshire | 4 |
| Cardowan Colliery explosion, 1982 A firedamp explosion on a longwall coal face in the Cloven Seam's V52 District at Cardowan Colliery injured 40 men on 27 January 1982, none fatally. The accident forced the colliery's closure while it was investigated, fed into a national review of ventilation and gas-monitoring practice, and became a landmark case study in mass burns treatment. |
27 January 1982 | Explosion | North Lanarkshire | 0 |
| Cavanacaw rockfall and water inrush, 2018 Over-charging with explosives brought down 150 tonnes of rock from an underground roadway roof at Cavanacaw Gold Mine, narrowly missing a worker, before the resulting unstable ground let surface water flood into the workings, further endangering the underground workforce. |
July 2018 | Collapse / Roof Fall | County Tyrone | 0 |
| Cefn Parc Arlais Colliery explosion, 1964 An explosion of firedamp at Cefn Parc Arlais Colliery, Bryn, killed three men on the morning of 15 June 1964; the deputy's safety lamp was found with its gauze rusted and partly burned away. |
15 June 1964 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 3 |
| Celynen Colliery roof fall (1909) A heavy fall of rock at Celynen South Colliery's No. 3 pit trapped collier Joseph Absalom and his young assistant Alfred Phillips at the coal face. Despite a rescue effort lasting up to 26 hours, during which the trapped men could still be heard, both died before they could be freed. |
14 May 1909 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Caerphilly | 2 |
| Chanters Colliery Explosion, 1957 Gas that had accumulated in Chanters Colliery's No. 2 drift after a roof fall five days earlier was ignited by an electrical arc when an electrician twisted a switch's cover plate onto a live busbar, killing eight men. |
6 March 1957 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 8 |
| Chartershaugh Colliery Explosion, 1778 A firedamp explosion at Chartershaugh Colliery on 8 December 1778 killed 24 men, one of the deadliest recorded Durham coalfield disasters of the eighteenth century. |
8 December 1778 | Explosion | County Durham | — |
| Chatterley Whitfield (Whitfield) Colliery explosion A smithy fire spread through the ventilation flue and ignited gas underground, and further explosions followed when ventilation was cut to fight the fire — sources give the final death toll as anywhere from 21 to 28. |
7 February 1881 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 24 |
| Cinder Pits Inundation, 1838 After two days of incessant rain followed by snow, the sky over Waun Afon and the Coity darkened about midday on 28 November 1838 and discharged. The water inundated the works, nearly filled the valley, raised the river by many feet and burst over the embankment protecting the mouth of the Old Level at Blaenavon. Fifteen people in the workings were drowned, five of them children and two of them girls. It was Blaenavon's worst industrial accident. |
28 November 1838 | Flooding / Inundation | Torfaen | 15 |
| Clandown Colliery Gunpowder Explosion (1868) Two colliers were fatally injured by a gunpowder explosion caused by misusing blasting powder meant only for the roof, on coal itself. |
27 November 1868 | Explosion | Somerset | 2 |
| Clandown Colliery Roof Fall (1877) Two colliers, one of them a teenager, were killed together in a single fall of roof. |
5 February 1877 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Somerset | 2 |
| Clay Cross Colliery accident of 1865 A firedamp explosion in the Black Shale coal of Clay Cross Colliery's No. 4 Pit killed eight men on 3 May 1865; the Inspector traced the gas to a fissure in the stall floor that ordinary ventilation could not dilute, ignited by a naked light. |
3 May 1865 | Explosion | Derbyshire | 8 |
| Clay Cross Colliery inundation, 1861 About three in the afternoon of 11 June 1861 a Clay Cross miner saw water oozing in his stall. The warning went round by way of the deputy's son and reached the deputy two hours later, just as a torrent of black shale water from the old No. 1 workings broke in. Most men got out, the last swimming to the chain; twenty-three did not. The plans had shown a forty-yard barrier of coal that had in fact been worked away, and it took twenty-two days to reach the dead. |
11 June 1861 | Flooding / Inundation | Derbyshire | 23 |
| Clifton Colliery explosion, 1914 About 8 a.m. on Tuesday 4 August 1914, with the pit off work, an explosion of firedamp in the Lickbank seam of the William Pit killed the deputy Isaac Smith, the examiner James Wright, who were repairing a gateroad, and the pumpman John Wilkinson at his electric pump, and injured a fourth man. No one had inspected the district since the Friday, the fan had stood for twelve hours on the Saturday, and a leaking pump motor sat in a badly placed pump-house through which the return air could circulate. The manager could not say what fired the gas; the agent, manager and under-manager pleaded guilty at Workington on 28 October 1914 to the breach of section 64 of the Coal Mines Act. |
4 August 1914 | Explosion | Cumbria | 3 |
| Clifton Hall Colliery explosion Firedamp that had gathered in the void above a collapsing goaf reached the working places at the far end of number 2 East and was lit by a candle. The blast ran through almost the whole Trencherbone seam, and 177 or 178 men and boys died — by burns, by injury, or by the afterdamp that followed. |
18 June 1885 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 178 |
| Clyde Colliery boiler-house wall collapse, 1924 Shortly after noon on 29 November 1924 two boiler firemen at Clyde Colliery, Hamilton, were firing a battery of Lancashire boilers when the eight-foot brick wall behind them, holding back a stack of fuel, gave way under its weight and buried them. Philip Cundalen and Arthur Roadnight were killed outright. The Inspector found the wall had been built without buttresses. |
1924 | Other | South Lanarkshire | 2 |
| Collins Green Colliery roof fall, 1940 Seven men were relocating a turbine in the main level of the Collins Green Pit at Bold when a section of roof collapsed on them on 14 February 1940, injuring two and completely burying five; three were dug out alive over the following hours but two, including the overman's own father, died after more than thirty hours under the fall. Two rescuers were awarded the Edward Medal. |
14 February 1940 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Merseyside | 2 |
| Combs Colliery Explosion, 1893 A few minutes after noon on 4 July 1893, during the men's dinner hour, an explosion of firedamp ignited by a naked light tore through the Wheatley seam at Combs Pit, Thornhill. Of the 146 people underground, 139 died — forty-six of them under sixteen, and seven of those aged twelve. Most died not of the blast but of the afterdamp. |
4 July 1893 | Explosion | West Yorkshire | 139 |
| Congo Pit flooding, 1895 At ten past one in the morning of 10 December 1895 the Emerald Pit in the townland of Congo flooded catastrophically and six men were killed. The colliery's head engineer had warned that old water-filled shafts lay nearby and that breaching one would be disastrous. That is exactly what happened. |
10 December 1895 | Flooding / Inundation | County Tyrone | 6 |
| Conygre Pit explosion An explosion on the night maintenance shift at Lower Conygre, Timsbury, on 6 February 1895 killed seven men and four horses. Nine men were underground. The two who lived were working in a part of the pit ventilated from a different source, and the blast never reached them. |
6 February 1895 | Explosion | Somerset | 7 |
| Cossall Colliery Roof Fall, 1888 Two boys, William Green aged fifteen and William Horton aged fourteen, went into an old gateway that was being filled up to eat their breakfast and were killed by a fall of roof. The inquest was held the next day at the Crown Inn, Awsworth. |
9 October 1888 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Nottinghamshire | 2 |
| Creswell Colliery fire, 1950 A conveyor-belt fire at a transfer point in Creswell Colliery's High Hazel seam killed 80 men by carbon monoxide poisoning on 26 September 1950, after fire cut off the only intake route and toxic smoke filled the sole usable return airway — one of the worst British coal-mining disasters of the post-war era. |
26 September 1950 | Fire | Derbyshire | 80 |
| Cribbwr Fawr Colliery electrocution, 1909 On 12 August 1909 two colliers at Cribbwr Fawr Colliery, near Porthcawl, were killed by a live power cable on the main slant. The younger, stepping off the carriage that had carried the men down, steadied himself on the cable and was fatally shocked; David Thomas, walking down afterwards, was found dead further up. The cable's armour had been made live by damage from runaway trams and poor earthing. |
12 August 1909 | Machinery | Bridgend | 2 |
| Cronton Colliery explosion An explosion in the Pasture (Crombouke) seam during the morning shift killed eight men after two shots were fired simultaneously at adjoining stalls, likely igniting firedamp released by a roof fall. |
11 December 1917 | Explosion | Merseyside | 8 |
| Crossgill Mine Fall of Ground (1911) A large mass of ore and stone fell without warning from the side of a working at Crossgill Mine, killing two men on the spot. |
14 September 1911 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cumbria | 2 |
| Cwm Ebol Reservoir Dam Breach (2012) A landslip cracked the dam wall of Cwm Ebol quarry's old mill reservoir and blocked its sluice gates, causing water to overtop the structure and prompting the precautionary evacuation of the nearby village of Pennal. |
10 June 2012 | Surface / Tip Failure | Gwynedd | 0 |
| Cwmaman Colliery gas explosion, 1911 Around midday on Saturday 16 September 1911 an outburst of gas and an explosion in the main intake of the Hafod district at Cwmaman Colliery, near Aberdare, killed the lampman William Bryant and the haulier Thomas Davies and injured two more. Dust poured from the top of the pit. About 600 men were brought out, and the 1,600 at neighbouring Fforchwen, joined to Cwmaman underground, were ordered out too. Davies was a sergeant in the rescue brigade that came to recover him. |
16 September 1911 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Cwmbran Colliery scalding, 1866 At about half past two in the morning of 26 April 1866 a haulier bringing trams along the main horse road at Cwmbran Colliery came past the underground boilers too fast. The trams flew off the plates and knocked down the upright pipe carrying the cock used to blow the boilers through, and live steam poured out so fiercely that none of the three men there escaped. The Inspector had double cocks fitted afterwards. |
26 April 1866 | Machinery | Torfaen | 3 |
| Cwmgwrach explosion, 1820 On 9 June 1820 an explosion in the coal workings at Cwmgwrach, in the Vale of Neath, killed five people. Two of them were girls, Elizabeth Pendry, aged six, and Annie Tonks, aged twelve. The names of the other three dead, the owner and the cause are not recorded in the sources read. |
9 June 1820 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| Cwmnantddu Colliery Explosion, 1849 An explosion of firedamp in the New Pit at Cwmnantddu — the colliery later known as Llanerch — killed five men on the morning of 10 August 1849. Two of them were a father and his son of about fourteen. |
10 August 1849 | Explosion | Torfaen | 5 |
| Cwmorthin Back Vein collapse Most of Cwmorthin's workings in the Back Vein collapsed in 1884, fracturing the ground all the way to the top of Allt-fawr and draining a lake on the summit ridge. About half the mine was left inaccessible, production nearly halved, and the company was wound up within four years. |
1884 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Gwynedd | — |
| Cwmorthin fatal accident and mine-status test case A fatal accident at Cwmorthin — nicknamed 'The Slaughterhouse' after 21 workers died there between 1875 and 1893 — led to a test case that reclassified the site as a mine rather than an exempt quarry under new safety law, and the company was wound up soon after. |
1875 | Other | Gwynedd | — |
| Cwmtillery Colliery Explosion, 1876 An explosion at Cwmtillery Colliery on 18 December 1876 killed either sixteen or twenty-three men and boys, depending on which account is followed. It was the worst and the last of four underground explosions at the colliery in twenty years. |
18 December 1876 | Explosion | Blaenau Gwent | 23 |
| Cwrt Herbert Colliery explosion, 1906 At ten to four on the afternoon of Friday 1 June 1906 gas reached a gob fire in the Four Feet seam at Cwrt Herbert Colliery, near Neath Abbey, and exploded in two flashes near the deepest part of a slant running 800 yards from the pit bottom. Four colliers were seriously injured and five fatally burned, among them two fathers and their sons, dying over the following eight days. The fire could not be controlled, and the workings were flooded. |
1 June 1906 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| Cymmer Colliery Explosion, 1856 On the morning of 15 July 1856, 160 men and boys went down the Old Pit at Cymmer Colliery near Porth for the six o'clock shift. A gas explosion near the mine entrance trapped those already deeper in; 114 died, most of them of afterdamp. Forty-nine were boys under sixteen, fifteen of them under twelve. The mine's manager and four officials were charged with manslaughter and all were acquitted. |
15 July 1856 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 114 |
| Cynheidre-Pentremawr outburst, 1971 Shortly after noon on 6 April 1971, a heading being driven in the No. 2 Cross Measure Driveage at Cynheidre erupted without warning, ejecting around 400 tons of fine coal and roughly two million cubic feet of firedamp into the workings. Six men were killed by asphyxiation, and the gas travelled far enough through the ventilation system to overcome dozens more at a longwall face a considerable distance away before a quick-thinking electrician shut down an auxiliary fan and slowed its spread. |
6 April 1971 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Carmarthenshire | 6 |
| Darran Colliery Explosion, 1909 At about four on the morning of Friday 29 October 1909, with fifty night-shift men underground, Darran Colliery exploded. The blast vented up the upcast shaft and shattered the pit-head casing, and it disabled the winding shaft. Twenty-seven died — five of them rescuers whose breathing apparatus did not hold enough oxygen to get them out again. |
29 October 1909 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 27 |
| Daw Mill Colliery fire, 2013 An underground fire caused by spontaneous combustion broke out at Daw Mill Colliery, Britain's biggest coal producer, described as the worst underground blaze in the UK for thirty years; all 92 workers underground were safely evacuated, but the fire could not be extinguished and led directly to the mine's permanent closure and UK Coal's collapse into administration. |
22 February 2013 | Fire | Warwickshire | 0 |
| Deep Navigation Colliery shaft accident, 1902 A fractured cast-iron pump pipe fell from the shaft wall onto an ascending, double-decked cage carrying 32 men at Deep Navigation Colliery on 11 November 1902, killing five and injuring two. |
11 November 1902 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Merthyr Tydfil | 5 |
| Devon Colliery inundation Water that had gathered behind a dam in the Lower Five Feet seam burst through at about a quarter to six in the morning. Seven men were working at the level; six were drowned. The only survivor was found half conscious by the men coming on at six. The bodies were not recovered until the water had been pumped away, more than three weeks later. |
26 March 1897 | Flooding / Inundation | Clackmannanshire | 6 |
| Digby Colliery Explosion, 1928 A firedamp explosion at an electrically driven coal-cutter face at Digby Colliery, Giltbrook, killed two Awsworth men, James Briggs and George Dawes, and burned a third; the inquest found the men had gone down without a flame safety lamp and could not say what ignited the gas. |
5 January 1928 | Explosion | Nottinghamshire | 2 |
| Diglake Colliery Inrush, 1895 At about 11.30 on the morning of Monday 14 January 1895, after a winter of deep snow and thaw, water from the flooded workings of the old Diglake pit, abandoned since about 1850, burst into the new Ten Feet workings of Diglake or Audley Colliery at Bignall End and poured down the dip through the mine, drowning 77 men and boys of the 240 or so underground. About 160 escaped through the Boyle's Hall shaft, many led out by the under-manager William Dodd and the collier John Boulton, who went back into the rising water again and again and were decorated for it. A dam of tubs and timber at the foot of the dip and the threat of further floods and gas forced the rescue to be abandoned within the week with only two bodies recovered. The inquiry could not show how the water got in, called it an unforeseen accident, and left the men where they lay; three skeletons were found in 1932-33 and the workings were sealed. |
14 January 1895 | Flooding / Inundation | Staffordshire | 77 |
| Disappearance of Thomas Severn, Mapperley Colliery, 1918 Thomas Severn, the 43-year-old undermanager of Mapperley Colliery, vanished underground during his shift on 5 June 1918 while inspecting the workings alone, and was never found despite a two-month search costing £2,000; no body, lamp or other trace ever turned up, and the cause of his disappearance remains formally unresolved. |
5 June 1918 | Other | Derbyshire | 1 |
| Dolcoath Mine stope collapse A timbered stope collapsed at the 412-fathom level, one of the deepest workings in Cornwall, killing eight miners and trapping a ninth for over a day and a half before he was rescued unhurt. |
20 September 1893 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cornwall | 8 |
| Donibristle Colliery Moss Inrush At about twenty to two on the afternoon of 26 August 1901, soft peat began to flow into a heading in the East section of the Mynheer seam workings at Donibristle Colliery in west Fife. Most of the colliery ran beneath Mossmorran, a square mile of moss 450 feet above sea level, and two men probing upward with a rod to form an air shaft brought it down on themselves. Eight men died, smothered rather than drowned. Six were brought out alive, and the rescue was extraordinary in its own right: some three hundred volunteers came forward, and two of the rescuers were themselves trapped the following day and had to be got out in turn. |
26 August 1901 | Flooding / Inundation | Fife | 8 |
| Dudley Colliery Explosion, 1875 Two shiftmen, George Clasper and William Davison, were killed by an explosion of gas in the Low Main seam of the Dudley Pit, Cramlington Colliery, on 13 May 1875. They had been sent with naked lights to lay tramway plates in an old gateway whose ventilation was impeded by a fall, and went further in than the deputy had examined. The Inspector of Mines found want of caution and an imperfect grasp of duties on all sides, and that no special rules had been established at the pit. |
13 May 1875 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 2 |
| Duffryn Main Colliery explosion, 1896 On the morning of 4 August 1896 roof falls where pillars were being taken out in No. 1 pit of the Main Colliery at Bryncoch, near Neath, released a great volume of gas. The officials raised the alarm and some 175 men were drawn up within twenty minutes, but a fireman and four others went back to warn a father and his two sons working deep in the No. 2 South-East, and at about eleven the gas exploded at a partially protected Davy lamp. Seven died. The jury praised the rescuers, and the owners replaced the Davy lamps. |
4 August 1896 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 7 |
| Eaglesbush Colliery Explosion, 1848 Gas that had gathered in the old stalls of Eaglesbush Colliery near Neath exploded soon after three o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday 29 March 1848, and the gas in the other stalls exploded after it. About thirty men and boys were at work and twenty were killed, most of them by afterdamp; some were found to have been trying to get out along a level with their way blocked by wagons. The colliery had no artificial ventilation and naked lights were allowed. The inquest returned accidental death. |
29 March 1848 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 20 |
| Easington Colliery explosion, 1951 An underground explosion in the Fifth ('Duckbill') district of Easington Colliery killed 81 miners outright, with two rescue workers later dying from the effects of afterdamp — one of the worst British colliery disasters of the 20th century. |
29 May 1951 | Explosion | County Durham | 83 |
| East and North Wheal Rose Flooding Disaster A sudden, violent thunderstorm flooded East Wheal Rose and the neighbouring North Wheal Rose within minutes on 9 July 1846, drowning 39 miners in the deadliest single mining disaster in Cornwall's history. |
9 July 1846 | Flooding / Inundation | Cornwall | 39 |
| East Cannock Colliery Explosion (1877) A methane explosion at East Cannock Colliery in 1877 killed four boys and four pit horses, and seriously injured two men. |
31 August 1877 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 4 |
| East Plean Colliery explosion, 1922 A shot fired in the Torwood Levels blew out instead of breaking the coal, igniting coal dust and killing twelve men; four more were overcome by carbon monoxide, and the officials who led the recovery were poisoned in their turn. |
13 July 1922 | Explosion | Stirling | 12 |
| East Pool Mine shaft collapse A large underground rockfall destroyed both of East Pool's winding shafts and flooded the mine; no deaths were reported, but the mine had to sink an entirely new shaft to survive. |
1921 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cornwall | 0 |
| Easton Colliery explosion, 1886 Early on 19 February 1886, soon after the fireman had examined the Fiery or Smith's Coal Vein at Easton Colliery with a Davy lamp and reported it clear, the men went down and gas exploded near the crosscut. The damage was slight, a door blown out and some brickwork moved, but eight colliers died, three of them days later. The Inspector suspected a sudden outburst of gas from the strata or old workings, and recommended locked lamps. |
19 February 1886 | Explosion | Bristol | 8 |
| Eckington Mine Roof Fall In 1998 part of the roof collapsed at Eckington drift mine in Derbyshire, about 800 metres in from the entrance, killing two miners and injuring a third. The mine, opened only five years earlier and worked by the pillar and stall method, had had a good safety record until then. It continued in production afterwards and did not close until January 2019. |
June 1998 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Derbyshire | 2 |
| Eden Colliery explosion, 1927 At about 6.45 on the morning of 7 November 1927 firedamp exploded near the top of a rise drift from the Busty seam to the Towneley seam at Eden Colliery, Leadgate, killing John Davison, the 74-year-old fore-overman, and the masons Andrew Dickson, 49, and his son Andrew, 17. The Towneley had never been known to give off gas. The inspector traced the flame to a match struck near an oil vessel in a drift that had filled with firedamp after its air was cut off, and the manager, under-manager and a deputy were fined for negligence. |
7 November 1927 | Explosion | County Durham | 3 |
| Eden Colliery gelignite explosion, 1915 Frozen gelignite cartridges, being thawed over an improvised fire outside a cabin near the mouth of a new drift close to Eden Colliery, exploded on the evening of 15 February 1915, killing two men and seriously injuring three others. |
15 February 1915 | Explosion | County Durham | 2 |
| Elba Colliery explosion Firedamp exploded in the Elba drift at Gowerton in the early hours of Saturday 21 January 1905, described as one of the worst explosions ever to occur in the western part of the South Wales coalfield. Nearly fifty men had gone below at the start of the shift. Eleven died, three of them found alive and dying soon afterwards, and most of the rest were burned or badly shocked. The last bodies were not recovered until the Monday. |
21 January 1905 | Explosion | Swansea | 11 |
| Elliot Colliery Cage Fall Three men fell to their deaths at Elliot Colliery, New Tredegar, on 4 March 1892 when a bolt connecting the top of their cage snapped as they were being lowered down an 86-yard trial shaft, dropping the cage and its occupants to the bottom. |
4 March 1892 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Caerphilly | 3 |
| Eppleton Colliery Explosion, 1951 An explosion at Eppleton Colliery on 6 July 1951 killed nine men. Firedamp was ignited by the defective master control box of a Joy loader — a mechanical coal-loading machine — and the flame was carried on by coal dust. The Mines Inspector reported on it. |
6 July 1951 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 9 |
| Eskett Pit Fall of Roof, 1873 Two miners, Thomas Cameron and Peter Hughes, were killed by a single fall of roof at the Eskett iron ore workings on 16 September 1873. The Durham Mining Museum files the accident under Salter & Eskett, with the company given as Fisher and Co., and the local papers reported it as two men killed at Frizington. |
16 September 1873 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cumbria | 2 |
| Exhall Colliery fire An oiler at Exhall set his paraffin torch down on a beam beside the haulage wheels at the top of the downcast shaft, and it fell five feet into the wheel race. The headgear caught fire, dense smoke went down the shaft, and fourteen of the 375 men in the workings died of carbon monoxide. The other 361 came up, many of them walking two miles underground to the emergency shaft, because one foreman remembered his fire instructions and shut the separation doors. |
21 September 1915 | Fire | Warwickshire | 14 |
| Falla Hill Colliery fire, 1902 On the forenoon of Monday 20 October 1902 fire broke out underground at the United Collieries Company's Falla Hill pit at Fauldhouse. Some men were warned in time and ran for the pit bottom to be drawn up, but four working far into the workings had their escape cut off and were suffocated by the fumes: a fireman of fifty-seven, two brushers and a sixteen-year-old drawer. A memorial to the Fallahill Disaster stands at Fauldhouse Miners Welfare. |
20 October 1902 | Fire | West Lothian | 4 |
| Far Green Colliery shaft accident, 1859 An ascending cage carrying sixteen men and boys overwound fifty feet past its normal stopping point and struck the headgear pulley at Far Green Colliery on 5 November 1859, after the winding engineman was briefly distracted; ten died. |
5 November 1859 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Staffordshire | 10 |
| Featherstone Massacre During the national coal lockout of 1893, a crowd of over 2,000 gathered at Ackton Hall Colliery amid rumours that coal was being moved out to break the strike. After the Riot Act was read and the crowd failed to disperse, soldiers of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry opened fire; two bystanders, James Gibbs and James Arthur Duggan, were fatally wounded and died the next day. The event became known as the Featherstone Massacre, a landmark moment in British labour history. |
7 September 1893 | Other | West Yorkshire | 2 |
| Felling Colliery explosion, 1812 At about half past eleven on the morning of Monday 25 May 1812 a firedamp explosion tore through Felling Colliery near Gateshead, killing 92 men and boys of the 128 below ground. The ground shook for half a mile and the report was heard four miles off. Thirty-three men were brought out alive by a horse-whim worked by hand, three of whom later died; everyone else was left below. A second explosion drove back the one rescue party that got down, and the pit was sealed for six weeks to smother the fire. Recovery of the bodies took from July to September. The local curate's pamphlet on the disaster helped found the Sunderland Society, out of which came the Geordie and Davy safety lamps. |
25 May 1812 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 92 |
| Felling Colliery explosion, 1813 At half past one on the morning of 24 December 1813 firedamp exploded again at Felling Colliery, killing nine men and thirteen boys and twelve horses, all of them in the headways near William Pit, the upcast. Those working in the boards away from it survived. The gas was supposed to have fired at the crane lamp, though other causes were suggested, and a week later fire was found in the waste and the shafts were stopped up again. |
24 December 1813 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 22 |
| Felling Colliery explosion, 1821 On 23 October 1821 an explosion at Felling Colliery near Gateshead killed six. It was the third of the colliery's four nineteenth-century disasters, and by far the least recorded: the sources read give only the date and the number of dead, with no names, cause or inquest. |
23 October 1821 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 6 |
| Felling Colliery explosion, 1847 Shortly after nine on the evening of 22 June 1847 an explosion at Felling Colliery killed six miners, four outright and two from their injuries, and eighteen horses. It began not in the coal but at an underground haulage engine, whose fire had been banked with the damper shut so that it made gas like a retort. The jury found accidental death and asked for the damper to be pinned open. |
22 June 1847 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 6 |
| Fenton Park Colliery explosion Ten men were about to begin the day’s work in one of the Fenton Park pits when firedamp exploded. Seven were killed; the other three were got out alive by the colliery company. Six men had died in the same pit from the same cause within the previous twelve months. |
1806 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 7 |
| Ferndale Colliery explosion, 1867 Two consecutive explosions at Ferndale Colliery's No.1 pit killed 178 men and boys on 8 November 1867, after a gas accumulation the fireman had already warned the manager about ignited from a naked light — one of the worst disasters in Welsh mining history. |
8 November 1867 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 178 |
| Ferndale Colliery explosion, 1869 A second major explosion at Ferndale Colliery, in the fiery Four Foot Seam, killed 53 men and boys on 10 June 1869, less than two years after the pit's 1867 disaster. |
10 June 1869 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 53 |
| Fforchaman Colliery explosion A collier at Fforchaman bored a hole and charged it with powder on the first morning back after an idle day, in a pit where blasting was prohibited under any circumstances. He had been refused permission to use powder a few days before and was cautioned not to fire the shot. He fired it, and the firedamp explosion killed him and two others and burned eleven more. |
5 January 1869 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 3 |
| Fforchaman Colliery runaway drams Two boys of fifteen were walking out of Fforchaman behind a train of loaded wagons on the night of Tuesday 20 October 1885 when one of the coupling chains gave way. The train ran wild and struck them, killing both on the spot. |
20 October 1885 | Haulage / Transport | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Fitzwilliam Main Colliery Explosion An explosion of firedamp in the dip levels on the west side of Fitzwilliam Main Colliery, near Hemsworth in the West Riding, on the morning of 25 January 1879. The pit had been open less than a year, gas had scarcely been seen in it, and the men were allowed to work by naked light. A fall is thought to have released gas from a thin coal left in the roof, which fired at a naked flame. Two colliers died at once and three others later; the inspector afterwards pressed the owner to introduce safety lamps throughout. |
25 January 1879 | Explosion | West Yorkshire | 5 |
| Flooding of the Adelaide Mine A sudden inrush of water flooded the Adelaide rock-salt mine at Marston overnight on 13 March 1928, ending rock-salt mining at Northwich for good and creating the subsidence lake now known as Adelaide Flash. |
13 March 1928 | Flooding / Inundation | Cheshire | 0 |
| Fochriw Colliery Explosion, 1902 A fall of roof released a body of firedamp at Fochriw Colliery, which was ignited by a naked light, killing eight miners. |
4 June 1902 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 8 |
| Fochriw Colliery Winding Accident, 1870 The winding rope detached from its drum at Fochriw Colliery's No. 1 shaft, sending the cages and everyone in them plunging to the bottom and killing five men — the second such accident at the colliery within two months. |
8 January 1870 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Caerphilly | 5 |
| Fordell Colliery boiler explosion, 1876 A steam boiler exploded at Fordell Colliery's William Pit near Dunfermline on 30 September 1876, killing four people outright — mostly young women sheltering near the boiler house during a work stoppage — with a possible fifth victim dying later of her injuries. |
30 September 1876 | Explosion | Fife | 4 |
| Foxes Bridge Colliery shaft accident Three shaftmen repairing a pump 150 yards down the Foxes Bridge shaft were killed when the bridle chains of the cage they were riding snapped and it fell; a fourth man saved himself by clutching the shaft guides. |
28 May 1893 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Gloucestershire | 3 |
| Frickley Colliery gassing, 1931 Five deputies were overcome by carbon monoxide and died while reopening Frickley Colliery after its Christmas shutdown on 28 December 1931, in what became remembered locally as the darkest single day in the colliery's history. |
28 December 1931 | Gas / Asphyxiation | South Yorkshire | 5 |
| Garden Pit Inundation, Landshipping, 1844 On the afternoon of 14 February 1844 the Daucleddau broke into the Garden Pit at Landshipping, whose workings ran a quarter of a mile out beneath the estuary. Fifty-eight people were below; thirty-three were cut off at once and forty drowned. Eighteen were brought up in the coal buckets by putting the horses to a gallop on the whim. It remains the worst loss of life in Pembrokeshire mining. |
14 February 1844 | Flooding / Inundation | Pembrokeshire | 40 |
| Garnant Colliery Disaster, 1884 At about five on the morning of Wednesday 16 January 1884, ten men crowded into a cage at Garnant Colliery that was meant to carry eight. The winding rope snapped and the cage fell 225 feet to the bottom of the shaft. All ten were killed — four of them aged sixteen or under. They had come early so as to finish in time for a funeral. |
16 January 1884 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Carmarthenshire | 10 |
| Garngoch Colliery explosion, 1880 On 7 July 1880 firedamp exploded in the Swansea Five Feet seam at Garngoch Colliery, Gorseinon, 205 yards down, killing five colliers and a boy of fourteen. The pit was worked with naked lights. Two of the men were driving a stall through to another that had been left idle that morning after a fall, and gas was thought to have gathered there behind the fall and fired at their lamps, though the overman had found the place clear half an hour earlier. |
7 July 1880 | Explosion | Swansea | 6 |
| Garngoch Colliery roof fall, 1888 On 6 April 1888 two repairers at Garngoch Colliery, Gorseinon, William Hughes, aged nineteen, and John Jones, forty-one, were killed by a fall of roof while they were re-timbering the main road in the Five Feet seam. Nothing more is recorded in the sources read. |
6 April 1888 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Swansea | 2 |
| Gartshore Colliery explosion, 1923 An explosion at No. 3 Gartshore Pit on the evening of 28 July 1923 killed eight of the twelve men constructing a water lodgment at the bottom of a new shaft; a pit bottomer thrown clear by the blast climbed back underground himself to help pull the injured to safety. |
28 July 1923 | Explosion | East Dunbartonshire | 8 |
| Gellyceidrim Colliery runaway journey, 1897 On 7 July 1897, as a journey of twelve loaded trams was being hauled up the slant at Gellyceidrim Colliery, Glanamman, the rope broke and the trams ran back down the incline. Two men walking up after their shift, the collier Rees Jenkins and John Lloyd, could not reach a manhole in time and were killed. A runaway after another broken rope had killed a thirteen-year-old door boy on the colliery's slant the year before. |
7 July 1897 | Haulage / Transport | Carmarthenshire | 2 |
| Gethin Colliery explosion, 1862 Gas ignited at a naked flame in the No. 19 heading of Gethin's Lower pit on 19 February 1862, killing 47 men and boys. The inquest found the ventilation deficient and returned a verdict of manslaughter against the manager; a grand jury then found no case to answer. |
19 February 1862 | Explosion | Merthyr Tydfil | 47 |
| Gethin Colliery explosion, 1865 Three years and ten months after the Lower pit killed 47 men, Gethin's Upper pit exploded on 20 December 1865 and killed 34 more. John Moody, the manager held responsible for the first explosion and never tried for it, was found culpably negligent again — and acquitted again. |
20 December 1865 | Explosion | Merthyr Tydfil | 34 |
| Gill Head Colliery fall of stone, 1872 A fall of stone at Gill Head Colliery near Flimby on 17 August 1872 killed two hewers, William Ismay, aged 18, and Andrew Poole, aged 19. It was the worst single accident recorded at a pit that employed fewer than fifty men for most of its life. |
17 August 1872 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cumbria | 2 |
| Gin Pit explosion, 1863 A firedamp explosion at Gin Pit, Maesteg on the Saturday after Christmas Day 1863 killed fourteen men and boys — the most serious mining accident in the Maesteg district — after the pit went unexamined for almost 36 hours and a young, inexperienced fireman failed to inspect it before the shift began. |
26 December 1863 | Explosion | Bridgend | 14 |
| Glamorgan Colliery explosion, 1932 A gas explosion in the Pentre seam at Glamorgan Colliery, Llwynypia, killed eleven men, including two members of the rescue party. |
25 January 1932 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 11 |
| Gleision Colliery Flooding, 2011 Four miners drowned at the small drift mine Gleision Colliery when a controlled blast, intended to breach into disused flooded workings for ventilation, instead released around 650,000 gallons of water into the tunnel where seven men were working -- the worst mining disaster in Wales in three decades. |
15 September 2011 | Flooding / Inundation | Neath Port Talbot | 4 |
| Glenavon Colliery inrush, 1900 Five colliers drowned when a heading being driven towards old, water-filled workings at Glenavon Colliery broke through on 24 October 1900 — the boring ahead of the face had underestimated a fault's throw and so missed the water it was meant to detect. |
24 October 1900 | Flooding / Inundation | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| Glencraig Colliery explosion, 1902 A firedamp explosion followed by afterdamp killed four men working in two parallel underground roadways at Glencraig Colliery on 3 April 1902 — one of three serious multi-fatality accidents in Fife within little more than a year. |
3 April 1902 | Explosion | Fife | 4 |
| Glencraig Colliery Haulage Accident 1933 A Glencraig repairer named English was crushed to death by a rake of haulage hutches in 1933 while trying to escape unexpectedly restarted machinery — an accident whose 1937 House of Lords ruling, Wilsons & Clyde Coal Co Ltd v English, established the employer's non-delegable duty to provide a safe system of work, still a foundational principle of UK employers'-liability law. |
1933 | Haulage / Transport | Fife | 1 |
| Glyn Pits explosion and fire, 1890 In the early hours of Thursday 23 January 1890 gas exploded underground at the Glyn Pits near Pontypool. Most of the men struggled out, but five miners and nine horses were missing, and fires spread through the workings so fiercely that rescue was almost impossible. Five days later the colliery was deliberately flooded to put out the fire and save the pit, and the five bodies were never recovered. Within a fortnight some of the men who had gone to work at nearby Llanerch Colliery died in the explosion there. |
23 January 1890 | Explosion | Torfaen | 5 |
| Glyn Pits explosion, 1864 A firedamp explosion in the Rock Vein coal at Glyn Pits, Pontypool killed four — three men and a boy haulier — on 1 June 1864, after both ventilation doors on the heading were left open, cutting off the air to the face. |
1 June 1864 | Explosion | Torfaen | 4 |
| Glyn Pits roof fall, 1864 A collier and a haulier boy were killed at Glyn Pits, Pontypool on 11 August 1864 when a loaded tram, upset into a stall at the intersection with a heading, knocked out the timbers and brought down the roof — two months after the colliery's fatal firedamp explosion of the same year. |
11 August 1864 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Torfaen | 2 |
| Glyncorrwg Colliery Explosion On the morning of 13 January 1954 an explosion ran along the Panzer Face in the Six Feet Seam at Glyncorrwg Colliery. Of the 32 men in its path, 17 were severely burned and seven slightly; eight escaped unhurt and nobody was killed. A second explosion followed before noon the same day, and a third within the sealed district on 16-17 January. The official inquiry traced the ignition to a light-alloy roof bar: its rusted steel wedge had become smeared with aluminium in ordinary use, and when a collier struck it with a sledgehammer the resulting spark fired the methane. The Inspector recommended that light-alloy bars be prohibited on longwall faces with open wastes where inflammable gas was likely. |
13 January 1954 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 0 |
| Golborne Colliery explosion, 1979 A firedamp explosion in the Plodder Seam at Golborne Colliery killed ten men on 18 March 1979; a 20-year-old apprentice electrician, seriously injured, was the sole survivor among those caught in the blast. |
18 March 1979 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 10 |
| Graig Merthyr Colliery explosion, 1909 In the early hours of Friday 1 October 1909, as the night shift at Graig Merthyr Colliery in the Cwmdulais valley was about to leave, a pocket of gas exploded and killed five colliers and injured another. An open lamp was found at the face, and the Inspector thought the gas might have gathered in small coal lying on the floor, but he could offer no firm explanation. Three weeks later a fall of stone at the same colliery killed two more men. |
1 October 1909 | Explosion | Swansea | 5 |
| Grassmoor Colliery Explosion, 1933 Firedamp exploded on a ninety-yard conveyor face in the Deep Hard seam at Grassmoor's No. 8 pit just before two on a Sunday morning, killing fourteen of the eighteen men at work there. The source of ignition was never established, an electric cap-lamp headpiece being the likeliest suggestion, and a public inquiry was held under the Coal Mines Act. |
19 November 1933 | Explosion | Derbyshire | 14 |
| Great Boys Colliery Explosion, 1877 A blown-out shot at Great Boys Colliery killed eight men, despite the shot-lighter believing he had cleared the area first — the inquest jury strongly censured the mine's management. |
6 March 1877 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 8 |
| Great Laxey Mine scaffold collapse A working scaffold gave way underground, and the four men on it fell into a water-filled sump about 17 feet deep. All four drowned, including the youngest, 18-year-old Henry Lewis Gelling. |
10 December 1904 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Isle of Man | 4 |
| Great Western Colliery Fire, 1893 An underground fire at the Great Western Colliery, Hopkinstown, on 11 April 1893 trapped around 200 men in the Four Feet seam east of the Hetty Pit. About 150 were brought out alive; 63 men and boys, aged between 14 and 61, died. |
11 April 1893 | Fire | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 63 |
| Greenrigg Colliery pithead fire A fire at the pithead of Greenrigg Colliery, between Harthill and Fauldhouse, destroyed the surface buildings and headframes while men were underground. With the shafts out of use they walked out through the connecting workings into Southrigg Colliery. No one is recorded as killed or hurt. The pit was rebuilt and worked until 1960. |
1925 (or 1924) | Fire | West Lothian | 0 |
| Greenside Mine fire, 1952 A fire that broke out over a weekend in the North Shaft workings released carbon monoxide through the mine when the day shift restarted the air compressor, killing four miners — the worst single loss of life in Greenside's history. |
7 July 1952 | Fire | Cumbria | 4 |
| Greenside Mine gas exposure, 1960 Two surface workers at Greenside Mine, William Sinkinson and Alex Santamara, died from gas exposure after entering abandoned stopes without authorisation, searching for mineral specimens, on the night before the mine's second Operation Orpheus test explosion. A rescue attempt by two colleagues left both men briefly overcome by the same gas, and earned them the Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct; an inquest attached no blame to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment scientists then working at the mine. |
14-15 January 1960 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Cumbria | 2 |
| Gresford Colliery explosion, 1934 An explosion in the Dennis section of Gresford Colliery's Main seam killed 261 miners in the early hours of 22 September 1934, with three more men dying in the rescue effort and a further worker killed in a subsequent explosion — 266 deaths in total, making it one of the worst disasters in British mining history. A subsequent government inquiry found widespread falsification of ventilation records and serious management failings, though prosecutions resulted only in a conviction for inadequate record-keeping. |
22 September 1934 | Explosion | Wrexham | 266 |
| Grove Pit Disaster, 1930 An underground gas explosion at Grove Colliery, beneath Brownhills Common, killed fourteen miners — most from carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to escape rather than from the blast itself. |
1 October 1930 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 14 |
| Gwaun Cae Gurwen Colliery shaft accident, 1847 Six colliers who had gone down the pit at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen at six on the Tuesday evening signalled with the horn to be raised at three the next morning. The engineman, Morgan Davies, alone at the top, saw the flash of their candles as the carriage neared the surface and then heard it crash back down: a link of the chain with a small flaw had broken, and the men fell nearly ninety fathoms. All six were killed. |
1 September 1847 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Neath Port Talbot | 6 |
| Gwendraeth Colliery Inundation At about ten o'clock on the night of Monday 10 May 1852, water burst into Daniel Watney's Gwendraeth Colliery at Pontyberem, Carmarthenshire, and drowned 26 of the 27 men and boys working the night shift. Only David Evans, at the shaft bottom when the water arrived, got out alive. The dead ranged in age from 10 to 50 and included several sets of brothers and at least one father and son. Recovery of the bodies took about eighteen months. The inquest returned accidental death by drowning from an inundation of unknown cause. |
10 May 1852 | Flooding / Inundation | Carmarthenshire | 26 |
| Hafod Colliery Explosion (1873) The colliery's own master dataller improperly opened his safety lamp to inspect a ventilation door, igniting an explosion that killed five men. |
11 December 1873 | Explosion | Wrexham | 5 |
| Haig Colliery explosion, 1922 A firedamp explosion at Haig Colliery on 5 September 1922 killed 39 men, the worst of three major explosions to strike the mine over its working life. |
5 September 1922 | Explosion | Cumbria | 39 |
| Haig Colliery explosion, 1931 A firedamp explosion in the Main Band seam, over two miles underground at Haig Colliery, killed 27 miners and injured 13 more on the evening of 29 January 1931. |
29 January 1931 | Explosion | Cumbria | 27 |
| Hamstead Colliery fire, 1908 A fire at the pit bottom staging of Hamstead Colliery, near Great Barr, killed 26 men on 4 March 1908, including a rescuer, after poisonous fumes filled the workings before most of the underground shift could escape. |
4 March 1908 | Fire | West Midlands | 26 |
| Hapton Valley Colliery explosion, 1962 A gas explosion at Hapton Valley Colliery just after 9.45am on 22 March 1962 killed 16 men outright, with three more later dying of their injuries, in a mine whose seams were already known to carry unusually high levels of firedamp. |
22 March 1962 | Explosion | Lancashire | 19 |
| Harraton Colliery explosion, 1794 An explosion at Harraton Colliery on 11 June 1794 killed 28 men and boys, recorded in the Chester-le-Street parish burial register rather than in any surviving inquest or inspector's account — one of the earliest well-documented mass-fatality colliery explosions in the Durham coalfield. |
11 June 1794 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 28 |
| Harraton Colliery explosion, 1808 A firedamp explosion at Harraton Colliery's Row Pit on 29 November 1808 killed at least four men, including the overman, and left fourteen burnt, some fatally, after a party carrying a lit torch through old workings strayed near a pair of leaking dams; a second explosion during the rescue attempt killed the overman and two companions. |
29 November 1808 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 4 |
| Harraton Nova Scotia Pit Chokedamp Deaths, 1817 Two days after the Row Pit explosion killed thirty-eight at Harraton, eight men went down the colliery's Nova Scotia pit to repair shaft damage the blast had done. Chokedamp from the Row Pit had entered the workings. A second party sent to find them was driven back by it, and the eight had to be left to their fate. |
2 July 1817 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Tyne and Wear | 8 |
| Harraton Row Pit Explosion, 1817 At about eleven in the morning on 30 June 1817 the gas in the Row Pit at Harraton Colliery ignited and thirty-eight men and boys were killed. It was among the most violent explosions of its era: the shaft bottom, 82 fathoms down, was blown into the air along with two of the bodies. Ten of the dead were from a single family — a grandfather, his two sons and seven grandsons. |
30 June 1817 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 38 |
| Hartley Colliery disaster, 1862 The cast-iron beam of New Hartley Colliery's pumping engine fractured and fell down the mine's single shaft during a shift changeover, blocking the only way in or out and sealing 204 men and boys underground, all of whom died of suffocation over the following days despite a sustained rescue effort. The disaster's central lesson — that a mine with only one shaft has no way out if that shaft fails — led directly to a change in the law within months. |
16 January 1862 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Northumberland | 204 |
| Hebburn Colliery 'A' Pit Explosion, 1889 An improperly stemmed shothole in the Beaumont seam triggered an explosion at Hebburn Colliery's 'A' Pit in the early hours of 4 November 1889, killing six. |
4 November 1889 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | — |
| Hebburn Colliery Explosion, 1805 A firedamp explosion at Hebburn Colliery on 21 October 1805 killed between 32 and 35 men and boys, leaving five widows and eighty-one orphaned children — a tragedy that directly inspired Newcastle physician Dr. Thomas Trotter's pioneering pamphlet on preventing mine gas explosions. |
21 October 1805 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | — |
| Hebburn Colliery Explosion, 1814 An explosion at Hebburn Colliery on 12 August 1814 killed the underviewer and ten others while they were adjusting the mine's ventilation, after not allowing enough time for firedamp to clear. |
12 August 1814 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | — |
| Hebburn Colliery Explosion, 1849 A firedamp explosion in the Bensham seam at Hebburn Colliery on the morning of 5 June 1849 killed 33 men and boys, with almost everyone in the affected north-west district of the pit killed outright. |
5 June 1849 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | — |
| Hebburn Colliery Explosion, 1852 A firedamp explosion at Hebburn Colliery on 6 May 1852 killed 22 men and boys after a single 37-yard bord became fouled with gas when a ventilation door was left neglected. |
6 May 1852 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | — |
| Herbertshire Colliery explosion, 1893 On the afternoon of 30 June 1893, an explosion of firedamp and coal dust in the Dook Section of Herbertshire No. 3 pit, Denny, killed two men and injured several more. A formal government inquiry, appointed personally by the Home Secretary H. H. Asquith, concluded after a two-day hearing and 29 witnesses that a safety lamp had been unlawfully opened, exposing a naked flame in ground where fine, dry coal dust turned a small gas ignition into a serious explosion. |
30 June 1893 | Explosion | Falkirk | 2 |
| Hetton Downs Pit Explosion, 1836 An explosion in the Downs pit of the Hetton colliery on 28 January 1836 killed twenty and left another man so badly scorched there was little hope for him. The inquest found the cause was a boy failing to keep a ventilation trap door shut — and heard that the men preferred candles to the Davy lamp because candles gave a better light. |
28 January 1836 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 20 |
| Holditch Colliery disaster, 1937 A fire that began at a coal-cutting machine on the Four Feet face at Holditch Colliery, Chesterton, at about a quarter to six on the morning of 2 July 1937, and the eight explosions that followed it. Thirty men died and eight were injured. Almost all of them were killed by the last explosion, more than four hours after the fire started, while building stoppings in a position chosen against the manager’s advice in order to save the coal seam. The dead included two of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Mines, the colliery’s joint managing director, the under-manager and four members of the Hanley Rescue Brigade. |
2 July 1937 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 30 |
| Holmewood Colliery Entombment and Rescue, 1920 A heavy fall of roof shut two men into a space fifteen yards by ten feet at Holmewood Colliery. They were known to be unhurt but it would take days to reach them, and further falls came down over the next forty-eight hours. They were fed through a pipe and freed after four days, and four of the men who dug them out were given the Edward Medal by the King. |
22 September 1920 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Derbyshire | 0 |
| Home Farm Colliery inundation, 1877 Eight days after a fall of roof in the rise workings of the Ell coal let water in from the sand and gravel above, the roof at Home Farm gave way altogether about six on the morning of 23 January 1877 and water, sand and mud rushed to the two shafts. For a quarter of an hour it ran down one shaft only, and more than sixty men escaped by the other; four colliers at the far end of the workings were cut off, and the stream poured down both shafts for ten hours until the mine was full. An eight-acre hollow opened by the river. The bodies were found in October and November 1878, after the pit was pumped out to resume working, in spaces the sand had not filled, with evidence the men had lived for some time. |
23 January 1877 | Flooding / Inundation | South Lanarkshire | 4 |
| Home Farm Colliery shaft accident, 1894 At 9.20 on the night of 27 June 1894 three shaftmen at Home Farm Colliery, Larkhall, were on a scaffold hung from a crane rope in the shaft, repairing the slides below the Main Coal. Unable to lift the load in single power, the cranemen tried to shift the gearing with the scaffold still hanging, threw the crane out of gear, and the load ran away. The scaffold fell 39 fathoms and all three were killed. The Inspector blamed inexperience and a badly designed crane. |
1894 | Winding / Shaft Accident | South Lanarkshire | 3 |
| Houghton Main Colliery explosion, 1930 A firedamp explosion during ripping operations at Houghton Main Colliery killed seven men in December 1930, after a deputy fired a fourth shot hole despite reportedly detecting a break in the coal that should have prompted a check for gas. |
12 December 1930 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 7 |
| Houghton Main Colliery explosion, 1975 An explosion in the Meltonfield seam at Houghton Main Colliery on 12 June 1975 killed five men after firedamp, which had accumulated in an unventilated heading for nine days, was ignited by frictional sparking from an auxiliary fan; a major public inquiry followed. |
12 June 1975 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 5 |
| Houghton Main Colliery shaft accident, 1886 An overwound cage struck the headframe and fell 535 yards down the shaft at Houghton Main Colliery on the morning of 30 December 1886, killing all 10 men and boys riding in it; the engineman was tried for manslaughter and acquitted. |
30 December 1886 | Winding / Shaft Accident | South Yorkshire | 10 |
| Houldsworth Colliery Cage Accident (1906) The winding engineman lost control while lowering thirteen men in the cage at Houldsworth Colliery, Patna; the cage was violently re-raised on landing, crushing two men to death. |
2 September 1906 | Winding / Shaft Accident | East Ayrshire | 2 |
| Huskar Pit Flooding, 1838 A thunderstorm burst a stream into the ventilation drift at Huskar Pit as 40 children tried to leave the mine, drowning 26 of them aged 7 to 17 — a disaster whose scale of child deaths directly shaped the Mines and Collieries Act 1842. |
4 July 1838 | Flooding / Inundation | South Yorkshire | — |
| Hyde Colliery Explosion, 1889 An explosion of firedamp in the Two-feet mine at Hyde Colliery on the morning of 18 January 1889 killed twenty-three men and boys, almost all of them by afterdamp. The men worked by naked candle under an agreement made because the pit was believed too well ventilated to hold gas; the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death. |
18 January 1889 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 23 |
| Jamage Colliery explosion, 1876 At about half past four on the afternoon of 5 January 1876 an explosion tore through the Seven Feet Banbury seam of the Jammage pits at Talke, killing all five men working there and blowing the cage at the pit head into the headgear. A stopping had been opened to let material down, cutting off the air, and gas that had gathered for hours was fired by a shot in Daniel Darlington's place. The jury called the pit's discipline very lax and asked for gunpowder to be banned where safety lamps were used. |
5 January 1876 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 5 |
| Jamage Pit explosion Coal in a pillar being worked out at Jamage was found slightly warm two days before. The management decided to build the district off and withdrew everyone except the men putting up the stoppings. The stoppings were practically finished when, at about half past nine on the morning of Saturday 25 November 1911, the enclosed area exploded and partially blew them out. Thirty-one people were in the pit. Six died of afterdamp and fourteen were injured. |
25 November 1911 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 6 |
| Kames Colliery Explosion, 1957 An explosion in the West Mine's Six Feet Section at Kames Colliery, Muirkirk, killed seventeen men after a match struck to light a cigarette ignited firedamp in an unventilated heading — the worst Scottish mining disaster in six years, in a pit that had been considered so safe it was used for experimental blasting work. |
19 November 1957 | Explosion | East Ayrshire | 17 |
| Kellingley Colliery gas explosion, 2010 A methane explosion in Kellingley Colliery's 501's District during the evening shift on 23 November 2010 forced the evacuation of 218 miners. No one was killed or seriously injured, but a Health and Safety Executive investigation found a poorly maintained safety curtain had let an explosive gas mixture build up, and the mine's operator was later prosecuted and fined. |
23 November 2010 | Explosion | North Yorkshire | — |
| Kemberton Colliery Pit Cage Disaster (1910) A winding rope that had been tested sound that same morning suddenly fractured during a descent at Kemberton Colliery, killing seven men and boys, three of them fourteen or younger. |
Sunday night, 4 December 1910 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Shropshire | 7 |
| Kennox Colliery Flood (1943) A sudden inrush of water flooded Kennox No. 7 mine, Douglas, trapping three men of one family; a thirteen-day national rescue effort ultimately failed to reach them alive. |
30 May 1943 | Flooding / Inundation | South Lanarkshire | 3 |
| Keppel Cove dam burst, 1927 After a night of exceptional rainfall and gale-force winds, the earth dam supplying Greenside Mine's hydro-electric power at Keppel Cove was overtopped and burst, sending a flood down into Glenridding village that wrecked shops, bridges and a hotel — four hotel staff were rescued from a flooding basement. |
night of 28–29 October 1927 | Flooding / Inundation | Cumbria | — |
| Kilton Mine Kibble Accident, 1873 Two sinkers were killed at Kilton Mine when the kibble carrying them up a sinking shaft struck a bunton and capsized after a shot-firing operation, precipitating them to the bottom just as one of the charges exploded. |
23 December 1873 | Winding / Shaft Accident | North Yorkshire | 2 |
| Kinglassie Colliery Roof Fall 1912 A large stone fell from the roof at Kinglassie Colliery on the night of 19 August 1912, killing William Whitton, 17, and Patrick Macauley, a married man with an infant son, and injuring two other miners. |
19 August 1912 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Fife | 2 |
| Kinglassie Colliery Roof Fall 1926 Thomas Gordon Whittaker and John Bennet Culbert, both miners' drawers, were killed when the roof burst in a new working's main roadway at Kinglassie Colliery; a public inquiry heard the roadway had been insufficiently supported. |
17 December 1926 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Fife | 2 |
| Kingseat Colliery roof fall, 1873 On 10 September 1873 a fall of roof at the face at Kingseat Colliery, near Dunfermline, killed two colliers named Condie, George, aged twenty, and Robert, forty-seven. The fireman had told them the place was bad. The Inspector's comment was that he should have stopped them going in. |
1873 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Fife | 2 |
| Kingswood Colliery boiler explosion, 1851 On 7 June 1851 the steam boiler at the Starve-all coalpit at St George, worked by George Brain and Co. in the Kingswood coalfield, exploded and scalded eight men to death. Among them were the engineer, John Burchell, and his two sons. The contemporary verdict on Burchell was harsh: had he lived, it was said, he would have been tried for manslaughter, as one of the victims of his own recklessness. |
7 June 1851 | Machinery | Bristol | 8 |
| Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery Inrush A sudden inrush of liquefied peat and moss flooded Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery on the evening of 7 September 1950, trapping 129 miners underground; 116 were led to safety over the following three days in one of the most dramatic rescues in British mining history, but 13 died. |
7 September 1950 | Flooding / Inundation | East Ayrshire | 13 |
| Leadhills (Minehill) suffocation, 1817 Seven men died in the Leadhills Company's mines on 1 March 1817, poisoned by smoke from an underground engine that had filled the workings with sulphurous gas — four who had gone down early to get their shift over sooner, and three more at the 80 fathom level, two of whom died going to help the others. |
1 March 1817 | Gas / Asphyxiation | South Lanarkshire | 7 |
| Leeswood Green Blackdamp Deaths, 1872 Two Leeswood men, Morgan Edwards and Frank Jones, were killed at the Leeswood Green pit on 26 July 1872, the cause of death recorded as choked by blackdamp caused by deficient ventilation. Frank Jones left a wife and a number of children. |
26 July 1872 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Flintshire | 2 |
| Leeswood Main (Flue Pit) Inundation, 1864 On the morning of 15 December 1864 water from the pit's own flooded old workings broke into the south side of the Flue Pit at Leeswood and drowned eight, among them Owen Jones, a boy of ten years and one month. A chartermaster, John Pierce, was killed during the recovery. The coroner's jury returned manslaughter against all three owners; the grand jury at the Flintshire Assizes found no bill, and the manager was fined five pounds for failing to bore ahead. |
15 December 1864 | Flooding / Inundation | Flintshire | 9 |
| Levant Mine man-engine disaster During a shift change at Levant Mine, a link between the man-engine's reciprocating rod and its surface beam broke, collapsing the engine down the shaft while 130-150 miners were using it. |
20 October 1919 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Cornwall | 31 |
| Lewis Merthyr Colliery explosion, 1956 A firedamp explosion at Lewis Merthyr Colliery on 22 November 1956 killed nine men and injured five more, after methane that had accumulated undetected in an unventilated roof-fall cavity was ignited by a falling stone striking a steel roof support. |
22 November 1956 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 9 |
| Linnyshaw Colliery Explosion, 1861 An explosion in the Rams mine at Linnyshaw Colliery, Worsley, killed nine colliers; the coroner could find no evidence of how the gas had been ignited. |
27 February 1861 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 9 |
| Littleburn Colliery Shaft Accident, 1872 Two sinkers, Thomas Dove and Henry Kenney, were killed at Littleburn Colliery on 5 February 1872 when the winch rope ran amain — took charge and ran away — and knocked them out of the kibble they were riding, dropping them to the bottom of the shaft. |
5 February 1872 | Winding / Shaft Accident | County Durham | 2 |
| Llanbradach Colliery Explosion, 1901 An explosion in the Pretoria district of the No. 2 pit at Llanbradach Colliery on the evening of 10 September 1901 killed eight men and forty-one pit ponies. Only fourteen men were underground at the time — ostlers, firemen and repairers preparing for a shift due down at six o'clock. The inquest jury found that coal dust had been ignited by shot-firing at a place that had not been sufficiently watered. |
10 September 1901 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 8 |
| Llanerch Colliery Explosion, 1869 At about half past eight on the night of Tuesday 25 May 1869, firedamp exploded in the Sinking Pit at Cwmnantddu — the colliery later known as Llanerch — killing all seven men who were making roads in the deep, some 700 to 800 yards from the shaft bottom. The workings were generally supposed to be free of gas and, once tested with a safety lamp, were worked with open lights. Twenty-one years later the same colliery, still using naked lights, killed 176. |
25 May 1869 | Explosion | Torfaen | 7 |
| Llanerch Colliery Explosion, 1890 On the morning of 6 February 1890 a gas explosion in Cook's slope at Llanerch Colliery, Abersychan, killed 176 men and boys — one of the worst disasters in the history of Welsh mining. Two months earlier the colliery's managing director had written that the pit was thoroughly well ventilated and safe to work with naked lights, declining the Inspector of Mines' advice to bring in closed safety lamps after an explosion the previous October. |
6 February 1890 | Explosion | Torfaen | 176 |
| Llanhilleth Colliery Air Blast A rush of wind from a large fall of stone into a cavity at Llanhilleth Colliery injured seven men on 10 March 1905; the haulier Dennis Carroll died of his injuries a week later. First taken for a gas explosion, investigation found no trace of one. |
10 March 1905 (died 17 March 1905) | Collapse / Roof Fall | Blaenau Gwent | 1 |
| Llanhilleth Colliery fall of coal, 1907 At about one in the morning of 8 March 1907 a lump of coal seven feet across fell from the face in the Black Vein at Llanhilleth Colliery and killed two brothers, William and Walter Morgan, as they filled a dram. Welsh Coal Mines records that a 'bumper' shook the place; the Inspector found the overhanging coal had been held by a single sprag, totally insufficient, and noted that such falls had become more common at the colliery since the strike. |
8 March 1907 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Blaenau Gwent | 2 |
| Llay Main Colliery Explosion At about a quarter past one on the morning of Friday 5 December 1924, gas ignited in the North Two Yard district of Llay Main Colliery, near Wrexham. The flame travelled only twenty or thirty yards, but nine men and boys died in it — including the fireman who had fired the shot that set it off. The other 407 men underground got out. The divisional inspector’s report to Parliament found the district’s ventilation inadequate and criticised the practice of relying on exhaust air from a haulage engine to ventilate working places. |
5 December 1924 | Explosion | Wrexham | 9 |
| Lletty Shenkin Colliery Explosion, 1849 An explosion of firedamp at Lletty Shenkin Colliery, Cwmbach, on the afternoon of Friday 10 August 1849 killed fifty-two of the 112 men and boys underground. Only about five were burned; the rest were suffocated by the afterdamp. The inquest returned accidental death with a rider that the colliery's old workings should be separately ventilated and never connected with the intake air. |
10 August 1849 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 52 |
| Lletty Shenkin Colliery explosion, 1862 On Saturday 9 August 1862 gas exploded in the No. 2 pit at Lletty Shenkin Colliery, Cwmbach, near Aberdare. Four were killed, among them a boy, David Jones, and a second boy, David Davies, died of his burns some weeks later. It was the third fatal explosion at the colliery in thirteen years. No account of its cause or of an inquest has been found. |
9 August 1862 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 5 |
| Lluest Colliery Explosion, 1899 An explosion at Lluest Colliery at Pontyrhyl in the Garw Valley on 18 August 1899 killed nineteen men and boys. One of the dead had come from another part of the mine to help and was overcome by afterdamp. A Home Office report on the disaster was laid before the Commons that October. The colliery stopped producing three years later. |
18 August 1899 | Explosion | Bridgend | 19 |
| Lofthouse Colliery disaster, 1973 About three million gallons of water burst into the South 9B district of Lofthouse Colliery from abandoned 19th-century workings in the early hours of 21 March 1973, killing seven men. Only one body was ever recovered. |
21 March 1973 | Flooding / Inundation | West Yorkshire | 7 |
| Loveston Colliery Inrush On the morning of 26 May 1936 water burst into the workings of Loveston Colliery, a small anthracite slant near Jeffreyston in south Pembrokeshire, from old workings above and to the rise of which no plans existed. Twenty men were underground, several of them crawling in a drift only four feet high. Thirteen got out, some by seizing an iron haulage rope as the water rose over their heads and others through an airshaft. Seven were drowned. One of them, Joseph Phillips, had already reached safety and turned back for his younger brother Ernest; both died. The water rose 150 yards up the 390-yard slant and could not be held. The colliery closed the following July. |
26 May 1936 | Flooding / Inundation | Pembrokeshire | 7 |
| Lundhill Colliery explosion Firedamp exploded twenty minutes after the men had eaten their dinner underground, killing 189 of the 200 below. The pit then caught fire, and the only way to put it out was to divert a stream into the workings, which left the bodies where they lay for months. |
19 February 1857 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 189 |
| Lundhill Colliery explosion, 1854 On 22 August 1854, as the Lundhill shaft near Barnsley was being sunk towards the Barnsley thick coal, firedamp that had often been seen issuing from a drainage borehole in the shaft bottom came out in force and exploded at the sinkers' candles, killing six. The owners had supplied a ventilating engine, air pipes and safety lamps, but the agent and contractor had not used them and were absent that morning. Two inquests cleared the owners. |
22 August 1854 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 6 |
| Maerdy Colliery explosion, 1885 An explosion in the North West dip workings at Maerdy Colliery on 23 December 1885 killed around 76-81 men, with roughly 750-961 men underground at the time. |
23 December 1885 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 76 |
| Magpie Mine suffocation of three Maypitt miners Three miners from the neighbouring Maypitt mine suffocated after Magpie miners lit fires underground to smoke them out during a dispute over a shared lead vein — the origin of the mine's 'Widow's Curse' story. |
1833 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Derbyshire | 3 |
| Maltby Main Colliery explosion, 1923 An explosion tore through Maltby Main Colliery at 9.15am on Saturday 28 July 1923, a mile from the pit bottom, while men were working to seal off a stubborn underground gob fire. Twenty-seven died; only one body was recovered at the time. The disaster became known locally as 'Black Saturday'. |
28 July 1923 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 27 |
| Manvers Main Colliery explosion, 1945 A firedamp explosion in the Meltonfield seam at Manvers Main Colliery on 4 March 1945 killed five men after a damaged power cable, left connected and re-energised, ignited gas that had escaped past a ventilation failure. |
4 March 1945 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 5 |
| Marine Colliery explosion, 1927 An underground gas and coal-dust explosion in the Black Vein seam at Marine Colliery killed around 52 men in the early hours of 1 March 1927, one of the major South Wales colliery disasters of the interwar period. |
1 March 1927 | Explosion | Blaenau Gwent | 52 |
| Markham Colliery explosion, 1937 A firedamp explosion at Markham Colliery, ignited by a faulty electrical coal-cutter after a roof break released trapped gas, killed 9 men by carbon monoxide poisoning on 21 January 1937. |
21 January 1937 | Explosion | Derbyshire | 9 |
| Markham Colliery explosion, 1938 Runaway tubs colliding with steel roof supports dislodged a damaged electrical cable at Markham Colliery's Blackshale Pit, sparking a coal-dust explosion that killed 79 men on the night of 9-10 May 1938 — the worst of the colliery's three disasters. |
10 May 1938 | Explosion | Derbyshire | 79 |
| Markham Colliery shaft accident, 1973 A descending cage carrying miners at Markham Colliery's No.3 shaft failed to slow before reaching the pit bottom on 30 July 1973, after a fatigue-cracked brake rod fractured; 18 men were killed and 11 seriously injured. |
30 July 1973 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Derbyshire | 18 |
| Mauricewood Colliery fire, 1889 An underground fire at Mauricewood Colliery, near Penicuik, on 5 September 1889 killed 63 of the 70 men and boys working the pit that day, one of the worst mining disasters in Scottish history; it took over six months to recover all the bodies. |
5 September 1889 | Fire | Midlothian | 63 |
| Maypole Colliery explosion, 1908 At ten past five in the evening of 18 August 1908, an explosion of firedamp and coal dust tore through the Four Feet seam at Maypole Colliery, Abram, killing 76 men — Wigan's worst mining disaster. The blast wrecked the pithead winding gear and the fan house that ventilated the whole mine, and it took until 1917, nine years later, to recover the last body. |
18 August 1908 | Explosion | Lancashire | 76 |
| McLaren Colliery Explosion, 1902 An explosion at McLaren Colliery, Abertysswg, on 3 September 1902 killed seventeen men. The colliery was five years old, and the village around it younger still; the dead came from the new streets of Abertysswg and from Tredegar down the valley, and the youngest of them was seventeen. |
3 September 1902 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 17 |
| Michael Colliery fire, 1967 A fire broke out underground during the night shift at Michael Colliery on 9 September 1967, filling the workings with thick smoke as some 300 miners fought their way to the surface. Nine men died; the bodies of three were never recovered, and remain in the sealed workings to this day. The fire closed the colliery for good. |
9 September 1967 | Fire | Fife | 9 |
| Middle Duffryn Colliery explosion, 1850 Between three and four in the afternoon of 12 December 1850 a fall of roof in No. 4 heading of Middle Duffryn Colliery released gas that fired at the candle of the fireman, Henry Jenkins, who was cutting a new wind-way to keep the air course open. The blast killed men underground and a sawyer at the pit top, and more died of their burns over the following week. The number of dead is given as eight or thirteen. |
12 December 1850 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 8 |
| Middle Duffryn Colliery Explosion, 1852 Ninety-two men and boys went down Middle Duffryn Colliery on the morning of Monday 10 May 1852. Shortly before nine o'clock a fall in the deep heading released gas which exploded; sixty-four died and twenty-eight came out alive. Fifty-five were killed in the explosion and its afterdamp, and nine more died escaping when the platform they had gathered on in the shaft gave way. It was the worst disaster in the Cynon valley to that date. |
10 May 1852 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 64 |
| Milfraen Colliery cage accident, 1902 On 4 March 1902 a cage carrying men up the shaft of Milfraen Colliery, above Blaenavon, swung as it rose and struck an iron girder about 78 yards from the bottom, throwing five of them out to their deaths. Among them were two fathers and sons, the Griffiths and the Stallards, two of the dead being boys of thirteen and fifteen. The Inspector blamed slack rope jerking the cage off the bottom. |
4 March 1902 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Torfaen | 5 |
| Milfraen Colliery explosion, 1929 At 8.30 on the morning of 10 July 1929 gas exploded in the Mapstone's district of Milfraen Colliery above Blaenavon, killing eight men outright and one more who died of his burns. The formal investigation, held with the inquest, found that roof falls had spoiled the ventilation of two conveyor faces, gas had gathered at a fall, the fireman had missed it, and a defective Hopkinson coal cutter had sparked it off. The jury returned misadventure. |
10 July 1929 | Explosion | Torfaen | 9 |
| Mill Close Mine firedamp explosion Five miners died when a shot-firer's naked flame ignited firedamp gas that had already been detected and flagged as dangerous in the days before the blast. |
3 November 1887 | Explosion | Derbyshire | 5 |
| Minnie Pit explosion, 1915 At about half past five on the evening of Sunday 17 January 1915 an explosion in the Minnie Pit at Halmer End, North Staffordshire, killed nine of a party of 27 engineering staff repairing a broken haulage engine, among them the colliery engineer John White. It was believed to have begun in the gassy Bullhurst district, but the inquest found no evidence of its cause. Three years later the same seam exploded and killed 155. |
17 January 1915 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 9 |
| Minnie Pit Explosion, 1918 At about 9.45 on the morning of Saturday 12 January 1918, pay day, with 248 men and boys underground, an explosion of firedamp in or near the goaf at the top of No. 4 district in the Bullhurst seam of the Minnie Pit developed into an explosion of coal dust that swept the roads of the Bullhurst and Banbury Seven Feet seams. It killed 155, 144 of them by the afterdamp, and 44 of the dead were boys under sixteen; forty-seven escaped through the old Bullhurst Rearers shaft at Miles Green. Hugh Doorbar, captain of the Birchenwood rescue brigade, died two days later in breathing apparatus. Because the seam was gassy and liable to heat, the recovery of the workings took eighteen months, the inquest could not sit until October 1919 and the inquiry reported in 1920, finding the probable cause a defective safety lamp and blaming no one, but noting that the dust had not been removed and that the fireman's district was too large. |
12 January 1918 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 156 |
| Moelfferna Quarry Rockfall, 1915 Two quarrymen, Robert Jones and John Lloyd, were crushed by an unexpected rockfall weighing a hundred tons at the quarry in 1915. |
1915 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Denbighshire | 2 |
| Moorfield Colliery explosion, 1883 At 8.50 a.m. on Wednesday 7 November 1883 a sudden outburst of firedamp exploded in the Moorfield pit between Accrington and Clayton-le-Moors, killing sixty-eight men and boys, the youngest ten, and seriously injuring thirty-nine. Men who had seen gas burning in their lamps had run to the shaft and were waiting for the cage when the blast reached them. The jury could not say how the gas was fired; the Inspector recommended abandoning the Davy lamp. |
7 November 1883 | Explosion | Lancashire | 68 |
| Moorgreen Colliery Electrocution, 1913 Two men were electrocuted at Moorgreen while trying to make a defective electric coal-cutter work; a broken contact had put the 550-volt supply on to the frame and the earth through the cable pommel was broken. |
15 August 1913 | Machinery | Nottinghamshire | 2 |
| Moorgreen Colliery Man-riding Accident, 1930 A train of haulage trams carrying about 150 men ran away down an incline at Moorgreen, killing Thomas Bilbie and injuring about thirty-six others, six of them critically. |
6 November 1930 | Haulage / Transport | Nottinghamshire | 1 |
| Moorgreen Colliery Roof Fall, 1876 A very large fall of roof over the timbering at Barber Walker's Moorgreen pit killed three men working together, a loader of nineteen, a driver of fifteen and a stallman of thirty-three. |
26 June 1876 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Nottinghamshire | 3 |
| Morfa Colliery explosion An explosion of gas at Vivian and Son's Morfa pit near Taibach on 11 December 1850 injured around 30 men and eventually killed six, the earliest of the four disasters recorded at Morfa Colliery. |
11 December 1850 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 6 |
| Morfa Colliery explosion, 1858 An explosion of gas at Morfa Colliery, Taibach, on 25 or 26 November 1858 killed four colliers. Afterwards one man's safety lamp was found with its top off and a homemade key to its lock in his pocket, and none of the lamps was locked, though all had been locked when the shift began. Opening a lamp saved the walk to the lamp room to relight it. |
26 November 1858 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 4 |
| Morfa Colliery explosion, 1863 Shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday 17 October 1863 firedamp exploded in the western workings of Morfa Colliery at Taibach, killing about forty of the forty-three men and boys in the affected heading, most by chokedamp. Heavy falls delayed the recovery until the end of November. The Inspector thought gas had gathered in the goaf after falls disturbed the ventilation, but could not say how it fired; in the weeks before, the men had reported ghostly omens. |
17 October 1863 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 40 |
| Morfa Colliery explosion, 1870 Between six and seven on the morning of 14 February 1870, when 50 or 60 men had gone down Morfa Colliery at Taibach, a terrific explosion near the bottom of the working shaft wrecked the shaft and headgear and killed twenty-nine men and boys. Blasting powder for deepening the shaft was stored there, and the manager blamed it; the jury found firedamp; the Inspector traced the gas to a goaf that had been sealed off months before. |
14 February 1870 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 29 |
| Morfa Colliery explosion, 1890 Early on Tuesday 10 March 1890 an explosion tore through Morfa Colliery at Taibach, Port Talbot, a pit long known as gassy and as the pit of ghosts. Of about 250 men and boys below, some 100 walked out unaided; 87 died, including the manager William Barras and a rescuer, Daniel Brownsell. Five boys climbed out over a roof fall the next morning, and John Franks was found alive twelve hours further in. The jury found that shot firing had ignited a body of gas. |
10 March 1890 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 87 |
| Mostyn Colliery Inundation, 1884 In July 1884 water from the Dee estuary broke into Mostyn Colliery in huge quantities. Pumping made no difference, because the water was coming in from the sea. Around two hundred men and boys lost their work, the colliery never reopened, and coal mining at Mostyn ended after some six centuries. |
July 1884 | Flooding / Inundation | Flintshire | 0 |
| Murton Colliery explosion, 1942 A firedamp explosion at 8pm on 26 June 1942, in the Back-over Flat district of Murton Colliery's Five Quarter seam, killed 13 of the 15 men working there when a deputy fired six shot holes simultaneously without first checking for gas. |
26 June 1942 | Explosion | County Durham | 13 |
| Nantymwyn dynamite explosion, 1892 Two Cornish miners, William Beswetherick and John Lewarne, died after a box of gelatine dynamite they were handling caught fire and partly exploded underground — an incident that prompted a formal report to the Home Secretary by HM Inspector of Explosives. |
28 March 1892 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 2 |
| Nantymwyn Mine Explosion (1892) A box of gelatine dynamite being lowered down the shaft slipped and partially detonated at Nantymwyn mine; both miners lowering it walked home afterwards but died from the effects within days. |
28 March 1892 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 2 |
| National Colliery explosion, 1905 A firedamp explosion in the Nine Feet seam workings at National Colliery, Wattstown, on the morning of 11 July 1905 killed 119 of the 122 men and boys at work there, one of the worst disasters in the history of the South Wales coalfield. |
11 July 1905 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 119 |
| Naval (Pen-y-Craig) Colliery explosion, 1880 An explosion at Pen-y-Craig Colliery (also called Naval Steam Colliery), Penygraig, on 10 December 1880 killed 101 men and boys, one of the worst disasters of the Rhondda coalfield's early expansion; a joint inquest strongly condemned the colliery's manager, Moses Rowlands, for breaches of safety rules. |
10 December 1880 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 101 |
| Naval Colliery explosion, 1884 A second explosion at the same Penygraig pit that had killed 101 men in 1880 struck on 27 January 1884, killing 12 — 11 in the blast itself and a twelfth, Daniel Thomas, who died later from suffocation sustained during the rescue attempt. |
27 January 1884 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 12 |
| Neston Colliery explosion, 1777 An explosion at Neston Colliery killed four colliers, among the earliest recorded fatal mining accidents on the Wirral peninsula. |
17 May 1777 | Explosion | Cheshire | 4 |
| New Boston Colliery roof fall, 1905 On Sunday 16 July 1905 the under-manager Samuel Cook took fifteen men down New Boston Colliery to secure the main brow in the Ravenhead Higher Delf, which had been falling for a week where water from old workings had weakened the roof. As they put up a great baulk to finish the timbering a second fall knocked out six bars and buried the party: Cook, his brother James, and the datallers Daniel Baines, Thomas Woolam and Thomas Waterworth were killed, and two more were dug out alive after twelve hours. The inquest at the Waggon and Horses found accidental death. |
16 July 1905 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Merseyside | 5 |
| New Tredegar Colliery Explosion, 1875 A minor gas explosion at New Tredegar Colliery on 2 December 1875 injured two men. The workings were inspected, found free of gas, and the manager nonetheless ordered that nobody should go down for twenty-four hours. His order was disregarded, the men descended the next morning under the overman's instructions, and at eight o'clock a second explosion killed twenty outright. Two more died later, making twenty-two. |
3 December 1875 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 22 |
| Nine Mile Point Colliery sinking rockfall Twenty-six men were buried when a rockfall struck the workings during the sinking of Nine Mile Point's shafts in August 1904; seven were killed. |
August 1904 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Caerphilly | 7 |
| Nunnery Colliery Paddy Mail Accident On the afternoon of 3 December 1923 a haulage rope broke on the Main East engine plane at Nunnery Colliery while 120 men and boys were riding down it in the Paddy Mail, a train of forty-four tubs. The set ran away, gathered speed and crashed at Cain's Junction 377 yards below the starting point, some of the tubs leaving the rails. Seven men died and fifty-five were injured. The inquiry led to recommendations that ropes used for riding be limited in life, never spliced, and fitted with runaway catches. |
3 December 1923 | Haulage / Transport | South Yorkshire | 7 |
| Oakley pit explosion, 1856 On the forenoon of Monday 21 January 1856 firedamp exploded beneath a scaffold in a newly sunk pit at the Forth Iron Works, Oakley, near Dunfermline. The three colliers working on it to open an ironstone seam were killed, and the blast threw missiles out of the shaft that killed Marion Drysdale, a fifteen-year-old at the pit mouth. The Inspector blamed an unventilated space under a scaffold whose planks had not been made airtight. |
21 January 1856 | Explosion | Fife | 4 |
| Oaks Colliery explosion, 1847 A firedamp explosion at Oaks Colliery (then also known as Ardsley Main) killed 73 men and boys — at the time regarded as the first really serious explosion in the South Yorkshire Coalfield. |
5 March 1847 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 73 |
| Oaks Colliery explosion, 1866 Two explosions on successive days at Oaks Colliery killed 388 men and boys — 361 miners and 27 rescuers — and for nearly fifty years it was the worst mining disaster in English history. |
12-13 December 1866 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 388 |
| Old Coal Pit Explosion, Coalbrookdale (1856) An explosion caused by neglected ventilation rules at the Old Coal Pit, Coalbrookdale, killed eleven men and boys, including two who died attempting a rescue. |
3 July 1856 | Explosion | Shropshire | 11 |
| Pantyffynnon Colliery explosion, 1908 On the afternoon of 28 January 1908 gas exploded in the No. 1 East Level of the Upper Pumpquart seam at Pantyffynnon Colliery, Ammanford, while 200 men were underground. Gas had been troubling the district for weeks, and the men had been told that morning not to fire shots. The explosion was put down to shotfiring. Two colliers, Gwilym Griffiths and William Roberts, died of their burns and four others were badly burnt. The owner and manager were prosecuted over ventilation, and the manager was fined £10. |
28 January 1908 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 2 |
| Park Slip Colliery explosion, 1892 An explosion of firedamp, its violence multiplied by coal dust, tore through Park Slip Colliery near Tondu on 26 August 1892, killing 112 of the men and boys underground — one of the worst single mining disasters in Welsh history. |
26 August 1892 | Explosion | Bridgend | 112 |
| Parys Mountain boiler explosion, 1870 A large Cornish boiler at the ore-crushing plant exploded during a lunch break, demolishing the building; accounts from the same local research group differ sharply on the death toll, citing either one confirmed death with 8–10 injured, or seven men killed. |
19 October 1870 | Explosion | Anglesey | — |
| Pelsall Hall Colliery inundation, 1872 A little before nine on Thursday 14 November 1872 a collier named Michael Cash, driving a heading at Pelsall Hall Colliery near Walsall, holed into old unrecorded workings full of water. Within minutes the water sealed the deep workings from the shaft. A few men escaped by clinging to the cage; twenty-two men and boys were cut off. When the pit was pumped out, ten were found together in a dry refuge, dead from chokedamp; one body was never recovered. |
14 November 1872 | Flooding / Inundation | West Midlands | 22 |
| Pendlebury Colliery Explosion, 1870 A roof fall released a large quantity of gas at Pendlebury (Wheatsheaf) Colliery on 27 September 1870, which travelled along the ventilation current and ignited among men working with naked lights, killing six. |
27 September 1870 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | — |
| Pendleton Colliery explosion, 1870 At half past ten one morning in February 1870 the fireman Jonathan Chapman fired a shot in the No. 2 level of the Albert mine at Pendleton Colliery. It blew out without bringing down the coal, and flame swept the level, burning everyone working near it. Nine men and boys died, some at home and some in the Salford Royal Dispensary, four of them boys of fourteen to sixteen. The jury blamed the powder flame alone; the Inspector thought firedamp had fed it. |
February 1870 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 9 |
| Pendleton Colliery Floor Heave, 1925 At 3,550 feet — among the deepest workings in Britain — the floor of Pendleton Colliery's Rams seam suddenly heaved upward without warning, killing six men in a genuine rockburst, or 'crump'. |
4 November 1925 | Other | Greater Manchester | 6 |
| Pentre Colliery Explosion, 1871 An explosion on the night shift at Pentre Colliery in the Rhondda on 24 February 1871 killed thirty-eight men and boys. The blast wrecked one side of the headgear, and a rescue party of five was overcome by afterdamp the moment its cage reached the pit bottom; two of the five died and are counted among the dead. |
24 February 1871 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 38 |
| Plas Power Colliery Roof Fall, 1931 Three men on a Saturday afternoon repairing shift at Plas Power Colliery were buried instantly by a fall of roof estimated at 230 tons as they prepared to set a girder in extremely wet ground; it took a rescue party, one of them the father of a dead man, about twelve hours to reach the bodies. |
24 January 1931 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Wrexham | 3 |
| Pochin Colliery Explosion, 1884 An explosion at Pochin Colliery in the Sirhowy valley at about nine o'clock on the evening of Saturday 8 November 1884 killed fourteen men who were repairing a pumping station underground, and all forty-three ponies stabled below. The ventilation fan was destroyed, so rescuers could not go down until the Sunday afternoon. A fifteenth man died at the surface, falling down the shaft in the crush at the pithead. The Inspector of Mines reported to the Home Secretary that the explosion was due to shot-firing; the inquest found there was no evidence to show how it had occurred. |
8 November 1884 | Explosion | Blaenau Gwent | 15 |
| Point of Ayr Colliery shaft-sinking accident, 1952 Six men employed by a civil engineering contractor were killed on 4 July 1952 while sinking a new shaft at Point of Ayr Colliery. |
4 July 1952 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Flintshire | 6 |
| Portland Colliery Nursery Pit explosion, 1900 On 17 August 1900 men re-opening a sealed section of the Nursery Pit, about a mile from the shaft under Struthers farm, blew down the brick stopping with two shots of blasting gelatine and fired the gas behind it. They withdrew, but about an hour later a second explosion caught nine of them. John Gemmell senior died at the pithead and five more in Kilmarnock Infirmary over the next week, among them his son and the new undermanager, Andrew Johnstone. |
17 August 1900 | Explosion | East Ayrshire | 6 |
| Portland Colliery, Kirkstyle Pit explosion Three men went into a working place in Kirkstyle Pit at the start of the Sunday night shift and firedamp exploded, setting off canisters of Bobbinite left in the mine over the weekend. The fireman and a shaftman went into the smoke after them and did not come out. All five died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The manager and under-manager were prosecuted over the ventilation of the place, and the Carnegie Hero Fund made posthumous awards to the two would-be rescuers. |
18–19 January 1925 | Explosion | East Ayrshire | 5 |
| Pretoria Pit Disaster At about 7.50 on the morning of Wednesday 21 December 1910, an explosion tore through the workings of the Hulton Colliery Company’s Bank Pit No. 3 at Over Hulton, near Westhoughton — the pit universally known as the Pretoria Pit. Of the 344 men and boys underground in the affected districts, only three came out alive, and one of those died the following day. The final toll of 344 dead makes it the worst mining accident in Lancashire’s history and the third worst in Britain, after the Oaks Colliery explosion of 1866 and Senghenydd in 1913. |
21 December 1910 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 344 |
| Primrose Colliery Disaster, 1858 On 13 October 1858 the fumes of an engine boiler suffocated fourteen men and boys, and seven horses, underground at the Primrose Colliery near Rhos. The colliery was then owned by Morgan and Lewis, and was afterwards redeveloped as the New Primrose Colliery. |
13 October 1858 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Neath Port Talbot | 14 |
| Quarter Colliery Explosion On 16 March 1841 an explosion underground at Quarter Colliery, near Hamilton in Lanarkshire, killed every one of the seven people working below at the time, one of them a boy. Four more men died in the attempt to reach them, so that the rescue cost almost as many lives as the explosion itself. Eleven died in all. The pit belonged to the Duke of Hamilton and was operated by the ironmasters Colin, Dunlop & Co. |
16 March 1841 | Explosion | South Lanarkshire | 11 |
| Queen Pit Explosion, 1868 An explosion at the Queen Pit, part of the Haydock Collieries complex, killed around two dozen men and boys after a blown-out shot ignited accumulated firedamp in an area with damaged ventilation cloth. |
30 December 1868 | Explosion | Lancashire | 26 |
| Queen Pit Explosion, 1869 A second, much larger explosion at Haydock's Queen Pit, less than seven months after the December 1868 explosion at the same pit, killed 56-57 men and boys after a shot ignited firedamp released by a roof fall in a working known as Pilkington's place. |
21 July 1869 | Explosion | Lancashire | 57 |
| RAF Fauld explosion, 1944 An accident during routine ordnance handling at the RAF's underground ammunition depot, built into a disused Staffordshire gypsum mine, detonated thousands of tonnes of stored explosives — the largest explosion in British history, killing at least 70 people and leaving a crater over 1,000 feet across. |
27 November 1944 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 70 |
| Ram Hill Colliery Rope Failure (1855) A jointed winding rope broke while drawing two colliers up No. 2 Ram Hill Pit, killing both, and drew a government inspector's outright condemnation of the practice. |
5 April 1855 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Gloucestershire | 2 |
| Redding Colliery inrush, 1923 Water from long-abandoned 19th-century workings burst through a fault into Redding Colliery's No.23 pit before dawn on 25 September 1923, trapping 66 men underground and killing 40 of them in one of Scotland's worst mining disasters. |
25 September 1923 | Flooding / Inundation | Falkirk | 40 |
| Redheugh Colliery explosion Twenty months after Redheugh Colliery was abandoned, its sealed shafts exploded. Flame shot about seventy feet above the winding shaft, the timber seals were thrown sixty yards, a rope wheel from the fan shaft landed ninety yards away in a school yard and more than two hundred panes of glass were broken in nearby houses. Nobody was hurt, and the cause was never established. |
5 January 1929 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 0 |
| Rhigos Colliery Explosion Between eight and nine on the evening of 10 July 1941, gas exploded about a mile inside No. 4 Drift at Rhigos Colliery, above the Vale of Neath. Sixteen men and boys were killed, all believed to have died instantly in the blast, out of 36 underground. The dead came from the Aberdare and Glynneath area and included a father and son, and five of them were aged 18 or under. At the September inquest the coroner concluded that the gas had been ignited by a miner smoking: cigarettes and matches were found on and beside the bodies. |
10 July 1941 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 16 |
| Ripley Colliery explosion, 1857 A nine-foot heading driven 160 yards to the rise at Ripley Colliery was ventilated by a brick-and-lime brattice up its middle. The under-viewer had a hole broken through the brattice a hundred yards from the face and never saw that a door was fixed in it, so the hundred yards of heading beyond filled with gas. It exploded twice in October 1857 and killed six men, four of them on the 10th with George Gyte dying of the first explosion on the 5th. The inspector, John Hedley, prosecuted the under-viewer and the deputy and the magistrates convicted both. |
5 and 10 October 1857 | Explosion | Derbyshire | 6 |
| Risca New Pit Explosion, 1880 At half past one on the morning of 15 July 1880, firedamp exploded at the Risca New Pit, killing 120 men and boys. Almost all of them were repairers working through the night while the colliers were at home. The blast wrecked the engine-room at the upcast shaft and damaged the ventilating fan, delaying the rescue. |
15 July 1880 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 120 |
| Risehow Colliery Explosion Two men died at Risehow Colliery, Flimby, on the evening of 26 November 1957 when firedamp was ignited in a cross-measure drift as a round of shots was fired. The gas came from a feeder in the roof about 30 yards back from the face and had been detected repeatedly through the shift whenever the auxiliary fan stopped; the ignition came not from the explosives, which never fired, but from a spark in shotfiring cables carrying nearly forty crude, bare joints between them. The Inspector concluded that both deaths would have been avoided had the two simple distance conditions attached to the exploder’s Approval been observed. |
26 November 1957 | Explosion | Cumbria | 2 |
| River Level Colliery inrush, 1896 Water broke through from the abandoned, adjoining Ysguborwen colliery into the Gellydeg seam workings of River Level Colliery on 9 December 1896, drowning six men and boys; an inquiry found the barrier between the two collieries had been reduced to a few feet by unrecorded workings on the Ysguborwen side, and that the case for manslaughter against Ysguborwen's managers was strong but unlikely to secure a conviction. |
9 December 1896 | Flooding / Inundation | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 6 |
| Rosehall Colliery explosion, 1934 At about two o'clock on the morning of 14 August 1934 firedamp exploded in the Blair section of the main coal seam in No. 10 pit, Rosehall Colliery, where nine men were coal-cutting on the night shift. Six were terribly burned; five of them died in Glasgow Royal Infirmary over the following week. Their workmates carried them half a mile to the shaft through afterdamp before the Coatbridge rescue brigade arrived. A fatal accident inquiry followed, and in March 1935 the acting manager was fined for failing to provide two means of egress and for not reporting an earlier ignition of gas. |
14 August 1934 | Explosion | North Lanarkshire | 5 |
| Rosehall Colliery roof fall, 1874 On 19 January 1874 a large mass of freestone fell without warning from the roof of a longwall face in Rosehall No. 10 pit, Coatbridge, and crushed three colliers working within nine feet of each other: Alexander Mace, his eighteen-year-old son Robert, and Peter Duffy. The Inspector singled it out for its severity, but found no sign that anyone could have foreseen it. |
1874 | Collapse / Roof Fall | North Lanarkshire | 3 |
| Rosehall Colliery roof fall, 1940 At about two in the afternoon of 31 October 1940 a fall of roof near the coal face at Rosehall Colliery, Coatbridge, killed two colliers, William McGuiness of Bellshill and Patrick Cavanagh of Tannochside, and trapped their foreman, J. Bell of Coatbridge, who was not freed until after seven that evening. The colliery is recorded as having closed the month before, so the work in progress is unclear. |
1940 | Collapse / Roof Fall | North Lanarkshire | 2 |
| Rufford Colliery Water Barrel Disaster (1913) A jammed brake lever caused a runaway winding engine to drop a five-ton water barrel some 156 yards down the sinking shaft onto a scaffold of workers below. |
8 February 1913 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Nottinghamshire | 14 |
| Seafield Colliery roof fall, 1973 The roof of Seafield Colliery's D22 face, a steep seam running out under the Firth of Forth, collapsed on the evening of 10 May 1973, trapping nine men and killing five. |
10 May 1973 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Fife | 5 |
| Seaham Colliery Explosion At about 2.30 on the morning of Wednesday 8 September 1880, an explosion — heard at the surface "like the report of a heavy cannon" — tore through the Hutton and Maudlin seams of Seaham Colliery, County Durham. Of the 231 men and boys underground, 161 were killed by the NMRS reckoning; other accounts give 164. Nearly 200 horses and ponies died with them. All three shafts were blocked by jammed cages, fires broke out underground, and 29 bodies were never recovered: the Maudlin seam was sealed with them still in it, and the men refused to go back to work until they came out. |
8 September 1880 | Explosion | County Durham | 161 |
| Seaham Colliery Explosion, 1871 An outburst of gas from the roof of Seaham Colliery's No. 3 pit was ignited during blasting, killing 26 men and boys — nine years before the far larger disaster that would make the colliery's name. |
25 October 1871 | Explosion | County Durham | 26 |
| Senghenydd colliery disaster, 1901 Three underground explosions killed 81 miners at Universal Colliery as the night shift was leaving — an earlier disaster at the same colliery that struck again, far more severely, in 1913. |
24 May 1901 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 81 |
| Senghenydd colliery disaster, 1913 An explosion in the western workings of Universal Colliery killed 439 miners and one rescuer — the worst mining disaster in British history. |
14 October 1913 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 440 |
| Seven Sisters Colliery Explosion, 1907 An underground explosion at Seven Sisters Colliery on 10 November 1907 killed five men. It was attributed to a defective safety lamp, and the manager afterwards prosecuted both the fireman who had an unlocked lamp underground and the surface lampman who had let a defective one be given out. Both were convicted. |
10 November 1907 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| Sheriff Hill Colliery explosion, 1793 On 27 December 1793 an explosion in the Hope Pit at Sheriff Hill Colliery, on Gateshead Fell, killed fourteen people, the first of the colliery's recorded disasters. Almost nothing else about it survives: John Sykes's Local Records gave it a single sentence, and only four of the dead are known by name, from their burials at Lamesley church a week later. |
27 December 1793 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 14 |
| Sheriff Hill Colliery explosion, 1815 At four in the morning of 27 June 1815 Sheriff Hill Colliery near Gateshead fired while its viewer, William Foggett, and his brothers George and Robert were down the pit. The blast killed all three, and eight workmen died of the afterdamp, among them the overman Scott, a father and son named Wind and youths of seventeen and eighteen. |
27 June 1815 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 11 |
| Sheriff Hill Colliery Explosion, 1819 On the morning of Tuesday 19 July 1819, after the hewers had left and half an hour before the pit was to finish its day's work, firedamp exploded in Sheriff Hill Colliery on Gateshead Fell and killed two men and thirty-three boys. Had it come an hour later, it was said, a hundred would have died. Contemporary report blamed neglect or mismanagement of the safety lamps. Eighteen of the dead were buried in Gateshead churchyard and fourteen in the chapel yard; three were brothers from Whitehaven whose mother had only just persuaded the colliery to take them back on. |
19 July 1819 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 35 |
| Sheriff Hill Colliery fire, 1815 On 11 December 1815 the wooden partition that divided Sheriff Hill Colliery's shaft into upcast and downcast caught fire from the coal lamp burning to draw the air up. With the partition gone the ventilation failed. Every effort was made to get the men and horses out, and all were saved but five wastemen, who perished in the workings. |
11 December 1815 | Fire | Tyne and Wear | 5 |
| Shocking Pit Accident at Frizington (1864) A temporary scaffold erected at the mouth of the Crossgill iron-ore pit collapsed, dropping three men to their deaths while three others narrowly escaped. |
10 December 1864 | Surface / Tip Failure | Cumbria | 3 |
| Silverwood Colliery Paddy Mail Disaster A runaway underground materials train collided with a man-riding train carrying miners to their shift at Silverwood Colliery, killing ten men and injuring 29 — one of the worst underground transport accidents in the South Yorkshire coalfield. |
3 February 1966 | Haulage / Transport | South Yorkshire | 10 |
| Six Bells Colliery explosion, 1960 A firedamp and coal dust explosion tore through the 'W' district of the Old Coal seam at Six Bells Colliery, Abertillery, at about 10:45 on the morning of 28 June 1960. Forty-five of the 48 men working in the district were killed. It remains the worst colliery disaster in Britain since the Second World War. |
28 June 1960 | Explosion | Blaenau Gwent | 45 |
| Six Bells Colliery shaft-sinking accident, 1895 Four men sinking the shafts at Arael Griffin — later Six Bells Colliery — were killed on 9 February 1895 when they fell from the bowk carrying them down the shaft. Two more men died the same way before the sinking was finished. |
9 February 1895 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Blaenau Gwent | 4 |
| Snaefell Mine disaster Timber left smouldering underground filled the mine's shafts with carbon monoxide; miners descending on the morning shift were overwhelmed before they realised the danger. Sources give the death toll as 19-23. |
10 May 1897 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Isle of Man | 20 |
| Snailbeach Mine winding-rope accident, 1895 Seven miners were killed at George's Shaft when the winding rope — in continuous service for eight and a half years, twice the normal replacement interval — snapped internally and dropped their cage 252 yards to the bottom of the shaft. |
6 March 1895 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Shropshire | 7 |
| Sneyd Colliery Explosion An explosion of coal dust in the Banbury seam of No. 4 pit at Sneyd Colliery, Burslem, at about ten minutes to eight on the morning of New Year's Day 1942, killed 57 men and boys. Miners traditionally did not cut coal on New Year's Day, but the manager had asked them to work for the war effort and they had agreed. The explosion was confined to one district; four of the sixty-one men in it came out alive. |
1 January 1942 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 57 |
| South Kirkby Colliery explosion, 1935 A firedamp explosion in the Barnsley Seam at South Kirkby Colliery killed 10 men in August 1935; a second explosion during the rescue effort itself burned five more, including a rescue-brigade officer who later died of his injuries. |
28 August 1935 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 10 |
| Springwell Colliery Explosion, 1833 An explosion in the B Pit at Springwell Colliery on 9 May 1833 killed forty-seven people instantly. Only nine or ten were adults; the rest were boys, some of them eight years old. The mine had been examined and declared safe that morning, and safety lamps ordered as a precaution when a blower was pricked. Thirty-nine of the dead were still underground the following night. |
9 May 1833 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 47 |
| Springwell Colliery Explosion, 1837 Four years after an explosion killed forty-seven at Springwell, the ventilation had been rebuilt and the pitmen no longer thought the mine fiery. On 6 December 1837 a second explosion in the Hutton seam killed twenty-seven of the twenty-nine men and boys at work in that district. The likeliest cause was a safety lamp dropped across the rolley way and run over. |
6 December 1837 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 27 |
| St David's Colliery explosion, 1840 Late in June 1840 firedamp exploded underground at St David's Colliery near Llanelli, burning twenty-six men and boys. Five were killed, among them a boy of ten, and a sixth, David Samuel, fourteen, died of his injuries on 15 July. Survivors escaped only by retreating at once from the part of the mine where the gas fired. A newspaper said no one was to blame. |
27 June 1840 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 6 |
| St Hilda’s Colliery Explosion On the morning of 28 June 1839 an explosion tore through the western workings of St Hilda’s pit in the middle of South Shields, killing 51 men and boys. Most died not in the blast but of afterdamp. The inquest returned accidental death with a recommendation that working coal mines by candlelight be abandoned in favour of lamps, and a Committee for the Investigation of Accidents in Mines was formed in the town shortly afterwards — its report weighed the merits of the various safety lamps and did much to improve mine safety nationally. |
28 June 1839 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 51 |
| Stonehill Colliery fire A wall of cannel more than a hundred yards long caught fire 1,200 yards from the shaft at Stonehill Colliery, Farnworth, with about 300 men and boys below. The ventilation carried the smoke inbye onto the men working beyond it. Most of the pit got out; eighteen were suffocated. Two of the dead had turned back — a fireman to warn his workmates, a father to look for his son, who was found beside him. |
23 January 1877 | Fire | Greater Manchester | 18 |
| Talwrn Colliery explosion, 1857 At nine on the morning of Friday 21 August 1857 firedamp exploded on the north side of the No. 2 pit at Talwrn Colliery, Coedpoeth, where twenty-four men were at work. The shock killed a horse in the connected No. 3 pit. Four men were found dead, suffocated some thirty yards from where they worked, and eight more were burnt. The inquest found accident, but H.M. Inspector Peter Higson told it the pit was foul with gas from bad ventilation. |
21 August 1857 | Explosion | Wrexham | 4 |
| Tareni Colliery Flood, 1909 Five miners drowned at Tareni Colliery when a working district broke into the adjoining, long-abandoned and waterlogged workings of the Ynysgeinon Pit. |
2 November 1909 | Flooding / Inundation | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| The Longannet Flooding On the evening of Saturday 23 March 2002, roadways near the bottom of the Castlehill section of the Longannet Complex flooded within minutes, most likely through or around an underground dam sealing off older, worked-out ground. Fifteen men underground at the time were evacuated safely; the mine never reopened, ending deep coal mining in Scotland. |
23 March 2002 | Flooding / Inundation | Fife | 0 |
| Thorne Colliery Shaft Accident, 1926 Six sinkers were killed at Thorne Colliery on 15 March 1926 when the capstan engine holding their six-ton sinking scaffold failed and dropped it, with its ropes, to the bottom of the No. 2 shaft. It was the largest loss of life in a British mine that year, and it came three weeks after sinking proper had been completed. |
15 March 1926 | Winding / Shaft Accident | South Yorkshire | 6 |
| Thornley Colliery Explosion, 1841 A firedamp explosion in the Harvey Seam 'A' Pit at Thornley Colliery on 5 August 1841 killed nine workers, eight of them boys aged between 9 and 17, after gas accumulated when a young trapper left his ventilation door open too long. |
5 August 1841 | Explosion | County Durham | — |
| Tilmanstone Colliery shaft accident, 1909 Tilmanstone's No. 2 shaft was still being sunk in 1909 when a hoisting bucket, or hoppit, fell down it, killing three men and wrecking the pumping equipment that was keeping the workings dry. A thousand gallons of water a minute poured in, and sinking was abandoned for nine months. |
1909 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Kent | 3 |
| Trimdon Grange Colliery Explosion, 1882 An explosion in the Harvey seam of Trimdon Grange Colliery on the afternoon of 16 February 1882 killed 74 men and boys, among them rescuers overcome by afterdamp that travelled through the underground connection into the neighbouring East Hetton (Kelloe) colliery. |
16 February 1882 | Explosion | County Durham | 74 |
| Troutbeck Park Fall of Rock, 1887 Two miners at the Troutbeck Park green slate works, John Rowlandson and Joseph Woodcock, were killed on 21 February 1887 by a large piece of rock which fell on them while they were preparing to put a shot into it. The works had employed thirteen people four years earlier. |
21 February 1887 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cumbria | 2 |
| Tudhoe Colliery Explosion At about a quarter past one in the morning of 18 April 1882, firedamp exploded in the Brockwell Seam at Tudhoe Colliery, near Spennymoor in County Durham, killing 37 men and boys and seventy horses and ponies. It happened in the gap between the night shift and the fore shift, so those below were mostly repairers and stonemen. The blast ran the full length of the intake haulage roads, between landings some 2,500 yards apart, but was confined entirely to that one seam; the Hutton and Busty workings above it, from the same shafts, were untouched. The cause was recorded as ignition probably by a naked light. |
18 April 1882 | Explosion | County Durham | 37 |
| Tylorstown Colliery explosion, 1896 An explosion swept Tylorstown's Nos. 6, 7 and 8 pits as the day shift descended on 28 January 1896, killing 57 men and boys, after a delayed shot fired into a gas-charged road ignited firedamp and coal dust through the dry workings. |
28 January 1896 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 57 |
| Tynewydd Colliery inundation, 1877 At about four on the afternoon of 11 April 1877, as the men were about to leave, water from the flooded old workings of Cymmer Colliery broke through the boundary barrier into Tynewydd Colliery at Porth. Of fourteen men underground, two drowned at once and two more in a flooded heading; a fifth was killed by escaping compressed air as rescuers broke through to his group. Four men and a boy survived in an air pocket for more than nine days until they were reached through 38 yards of coal on 20 April, a rescue followed across Britain that brought the first Albert Medals awarded for gallantry on land. |
11 April 1877 | Flooding / Inundation | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 5 |
| Tynybedw Colliery bowk accident, 1895 With the winding shaft at Tynybedw Colliery in Pentre out of action, the men were brought up the upcast shaft in a bowk, a barrel wound by a haulage engine. About eight in the evening of 9 September 1895 the bowk, carrying six colliers and a conductor, caught a byat supporting the Nine Feet landing and tipped over. The six fell 73 yards to the bottom of the shaft; the conductor clung to the chains and survived. |
9 September 1895 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 6 |
| Ubberley Colliery explosion, 1851 Early on Monday morning seven men and boys walked into the south level of the Sampson pits at Ubberley behind the butty Ralph Hancock, who carried the only safety lamp; the rest had candles. Three hundred yards in, the firedamp fired and all seven died. Hancock had handed in his party's lamps the Friday before, satisfied the pit was clear. Six men on the north side, who had shut the doors behind them, survived. The coroner told the jury that no inspector had ever visited the district and called the new Act, with its four inspectors for the whole kingdom, ridiculous. |
18 August 1851 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 7 |
| Udston Colliery explosion, 1887 At about nine o'clock on Saturday 28 May 1887, as men were breaking for food, an explosion swept through the Splint Coal workings of Udston Colliery near Hamilton, sending flame up both shafts. Seventy-three men and boys died, 53 burned and 20 suffocated; only two men and a pony driver in the Splint survived. H.M. Inspector Ralph Moore blamed a shot fired in secret that ignited gas and then coal dust. It is said to be Scotland's second worst coal mining disaster, and Keir Hardie called the deaths murder. |
28 May 1887 | Explosion | South Lanarkshire | 73 |
| Underwood Colliery fire Underwood Colliery was found to be on fire on the Sunday morning of 12 April 1874. Two men went down at about eleven o'clock to save the horses, were warned they would meet firedamp, and went anyway. Neither came back. Two more who followed them were brought out exhausted. The inquest jury found death from choke damp caused by the firing of the woodwork in a stone heading. |
12 April 1874 | Fire | Nottinghamshire | 2 |
| United Hills Mine boiler explosion, 1830 An engine boiler burst at United Hills Mine (later Tywarnhayle Mine), near Porthtowan, killing nine of the thirteen people present. |
3 February 1830 | Machinery | Cornwall | 9 |
| Unity Brook Colliery explosion Gas escaping from a roof fall exploded in the lower Cannel mine at Unity Brook Colliery, Kearsley, killing forty-three men and boys — the worst day in the town’s history. Nineteen were buried at the parish church. The jury returned accidental death, praised the management, and refused to recommend safety lamps in place of the naked candles the pit worked by. |
12 March 1878 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 43 |
| Upton Colliery Explosion, 1940 Shortly before midnight on 4 June 1940 an explosion tore along a longwall face in the No. 2 district of the Barnsley seam at Upton Colliery, about a mile and a half from the pit bottom. Six men were killed and eight burned. It was believed that a stopping sealing off an area where a fire had burned some months earlier had blown out. |
4 June 1940 | Explosion | West Yorkshire | 6 |
| Usworth Colliery Explosion, 1885 At 8.58 on the evening of Monday 2 March 1885, methane that had built up in a stone drift at Usworth Colliery was ignited by shotfiring. The coal dust, gas and air explosion that followed killed forty men outright; two more died of afterdamp while trying to reach them. Hundreds of Usworth miners were suddenly out of work. |
2 March 1885 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 42 |
| Valleyfield Colliery explosion, 1939 An explosion in Dodd's Heading at Valleyfield Colliery on the night of 28 October 1939 killed 35 men and travelled more than 1,500 yards through the workings. The inquiry found it began as an ignition of firedamp during shot firing, and was carried by coal dust that should not have been there. |
28 October 1939 | Explosion | Fife | 35 |
| Wallsend Colliery Explosion At about two o'clock on the afternoon of 18 June 1835, an explosion tore through Wallsend Colliery on Tyneside and killed 102 men and boys — the worst of ten separate disasters recorded at a pit already notorious for them. The youngest of the dead was eight. Among them were trappers and putters of eleven, seventeen and nineteen, and whole families were hit: the Applebys lost Henry, a putter of seventeen, and James, a trapper of eleven. Many of the dead lie in unmarked graves in the churchyard of St Peter's, Wallsend. |
18 June 1835 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 102 |
| Walsall Wood Colliery Collapse (1956) A collapsed roof junction in the Charles Seam at Walsall Wood Colliery killed four men on 9 October 1956; a fifth was rescued alive after some seven hours trapped in the debris. |
9 October 1956 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Staffordshire | 4 |
| Wath Main Colliery explosions, 1930 Two explosions in the Billingley Drift District of Wath Main Colliery on 24 February 1930 killed seven men and injured three more, after a fall of roof broke a miner's flame lamp in an area an inspector's ventilation order had not, in fact, been carried out. |
24 February 1930 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 7 |
| Waunhir Slant runaway A journey of loaded tubs weighing about nine tons was being drawn up the Waunhir slant at Trimsaran when a tub tilted at the top of the brow and the hitching plate broke. The tubs ran back down the drift into the men walking out at the end of their shift, knocked out props at the bottom and brought down six yards of roof, burying eleven. Six were killed. |
16 February 1907 | Haulage / Transport | Carmarthenshire | 6 |
| Weetslade Colliery Explosion At 6.45 a.m. on Monday 1 October 1951 an explosion of firedamp swept the 3rd East District of the Bensham Seam at Weetslade Colliery, killing the deputy Thomas Whitney and the four men of his pumping and repair shift. The district had been gassed out for five days after flooding from old workings above wrecked its return airway and the manager short-circuited the ventilation to keep a pump running. Recovering the bodies took until November 1952 and the investigation until April 1953, held up first by rising water and then by the discovery of an explosive hydrogen-methane mixture given off by broken shuttle-car batteries, which forced the district to be deliberately flooded. The inquiry could not fix a definite cause, but found the only possible source of ignition to be an arc on the battery of a shuttle car the men had been using to move a fan. |
1 October 1951 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 5 |
| Weigfach Colliery Explosion, 1877 An explosion at the New Weigfach colliery at Fforestfach near Swansea on 9 March 1877 killed eighteen men and boys. The dead included the overman and two trammers aged sixteen and twenty, and most of the men left widows and young children. |
9 March 1877 | Explosion | Swansea | 18 |
| Wellington Pit explosion, 1910 An explosion of firedamp and coal dust in the No. 3 North District of Wellington Pit, Whitehaven, on the evening of 11 May 1910 killed 136 men and boys. The fire that followed could not be fought, and the pit was sealed two days later with the dead still inside; it was not reopened until the end of September. |
11 May 1910 | Explosion | Cumbria | 136 |
| Wellsway Colliery shaft accident Twelve men and boys were hooked to the winding rope at the top of Wellsway pit on the morning of 5 November 1839. When their full weight came onto it the rope broke and they fell 756 feet. Only one body was whole enough to be recognised. The rope was nearly new and bore what looked like knife or chisel marks drawn across the fibres, and the inquest found it had been cut by a person or persons unknown. |
5 November 1839 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Somerset | 12 |
| Werfa Colliery explosion, 1849 On Monday 14 May 1849 a man carrying a Davy lamp went into a heading at Werfa Colliery, above Aberdare, that was fouled with gas, and a boy followed him with a candle. The gas exploded at the candle. Two young colliers were killed and three more died of their burns; twelve were injured in all. It was the colliery's second explosion in a week, and the inquest jury asked for a fireman to inspect the workings before the men went in. |
14 May 1849 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 5 |
| Werfa Colliery explosion, 1856 In the spring of 1856 an explosion of gas at naked lights in Werfa Colliery, above Aberdare, killed a collier, Morgan Williams, and his ten-year-old son John, who worked with him. The sources place it on 17 March or 2 April. It was the colliery's third fatal explosion in seven years. |
March or April 1856 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Werfa Colliery explosion, 1886 At about half past two on the afternoon of Friday 26 March 1886 an explosion in the Seven Feet vein at Werfa Colliery, Aberdare, blew away the covering at the top of the shaft. An exploring party led by the manager found three men dead 600 yards from the shaft bottom, and a fourth died of his injuries a week later. The workings below were little damaged. Safety lamps were in use, and the cause was not known. |
26 March 1886 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 4 |
| Werfa Colliery shaft accident, 1851 At seven in the morning on Thursday 4 September 1851 the chain snapped in the balance pit at Werfa Colliery above Aberdare, and both cages fell down the shaft, 180 feet. Eleven men and boys were in the descending cage and two or three in the ascending one. Word spread quickly through the neighbourhood, but the waiting crowd soon learned that every man had been killed instantly: fourteen by Welsh Coal Mines' count, sixteen by the NMRS. |
4 September 1851 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 14 |
| Wernbwll Colliery explosion, 1929 An explosion in the No.13 level of Wernbwll Colliery's West District killed seven men on the evening of 28 November 1929; the official inquiry blamed firedamp ignited at an open acetylene lamp, spread by coal dust the colliery had never stone-dusted against. |
28 November 1929 | Explosion | Swansea | 7 |
| West Cannock No. 5 Colliery Explosion (1933) An explosion in the Shallow Seam at West Cannock No. 5 Colliery, Hednesford, killed several miners on 16 May 1933 -- sources disagree on the exact toll. |
16 May 1933 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 5 |
| West Stanley Colliery explosion, 1909 A coal-dust explosion at West Stanley Colliery — the Burns Pit — on the afternoon of 16 February 1909 killed some 167 men and boys across four seams, among them children of thirteen and fourteen. Around thirty came out alive, twenty-six of them led out by a deputy who kept them together in the dark. |
16 February 1909 | Explosion | County Durham | 167 |
| Western Colliery sinking explosion, 1874 A gas explosion during the sinking of Western Colliery, at what later became the Wyndham Western complex at Nantymoel, killed five sinkers on 7 December 1874. |
7 December 1874 | Explosion | Bridgend | 5 |
| Wheal Agar Shaft Accident At about seven on the morning of 15 August 1883, a cage carrying thirteen men reached the landing brace at Wheal Agar in Illogan. One man jumped off. At that moment the capstan rope broke ten feet above the shackle, and the cage fell the length of the shaft with the other twelve men in and on it. All twelve were killed. The rope had been in use at least two years, was internally corroded where it parted, and the corrosion had been hidden by layers of tar and grease. The men were on the capstan rope at all only because the winding rope was under repair, and the agent had chosen not to send them up the ladders while the work was finished. |
15 August 1883 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Cornwall | 12 |
| Wheal Jane acid mine water discharge, 1992 An estimated 50,000 m³ of acidic mine water burst from the flooding, abandoned Wheal Jane workings and turned the Carnon River and Fal estuary ochre-yellow — one of the most notorious mine-water pollution incidents in British history, and one still being actively treated more than three decades later. |
13 January 1992 | Flooding / Inundation | Cornwall | — |
| Wheal Mary Ann Footway Shaft Rescue A volunteer clearing the Footway Shaft at the disused Wheal Mary Ann (recorded in the Cornwall Fire & Rescue Service's own report as 'St Mary's Lead Works') was trapped chest-deep when part of a drainage trench collapsed on him, triggering a rescue involving Cornwall Fire & Rescue Service, paramedics, an RAF Sea King helicopter and the Cornwall Air Ambulance. |
13 November 2007 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Cornwall | 0 |
| Wheal Owles flooding disaster Miners broke through into the flooded, long-abandoned workings of Wheal Drea, trapping and drowning twenty men and boys underground. |
10 January 1893 | Flooding / Inundation | Cornwall | 20 |
| Wheldale Colliery explosion, 1923 An underground explosion in the Silkstone Seam's No. 2 District at Wheldale Colliery on 22 February 1923 killed nine men — one outright, the rest of severe burns — after the deputy's own shot ignited coal dust during ripping work. |
22 February 1923 | Explosion | West Yorkshire | 9 |
| Wheldale Colliery fire, 1891 A fire broke out in the engine plane of Wheldale Colliery's Silkstone Pit on 8 December 1891, killing five men overcome by smoke and fumes while trying to escape; the mine was ultimately flooded to bring the fire under control. |
8 December 1891 | Fire | West Yorkshire | 5 |
| Whitfield Colliery Explosion (1881) A firedamp explosion caused by an overheated blacksmith's flue killed at least 21, and by some accounts as many as 28, men and boys at Whitfield Colliery, Hanley -- one of the worst disasters recorded on this archive -- and led to the colliery manager standing trial for manslaughter. |
7 February 1881 | Explosion | Staffordshire | 24 |
| Whitwick Colliery Fire, 1898 A gob fire in Whitwick Colliery's No. 5 Pit killed 35 men and boys overnight, the worst mining disaster in Leicestershire's history, leaving 27 widows and 84 children under 13 orphaned. |
19 April 1898 | Fire | Leicestershire | 35 |
| William Pit Explosion A shot fired in the No. 2 Dip face of the undersea workings at Whitehaven ignited firedamp and coal dust, two and a half miles out from the shaft. Fourteen men were killed by the blast. Ninety more survived it and then died of the carbon monoxide it left behind, before rescuers working through more than twenty hours could reach them. |
15 August 1947 | Explosion | Cumbria | 104 |
| William Pit explosion, 1821 On 13 April 1821 a sudden great outburst of firedamp in the Main Band workings of William Pit, Whitehaven, reached an open light and exploded, killing twelve: five haggers and seven boys and girls. Each hagger had been issued with a Davy safety lamp, but working with the top off was common. It was the first of the pit's great explosions; two years later a worse one killed thirty-two. |
13 April 1821 | Explosion | Cumbria | 12 |
| William Pit Explosion, 1823 A firedamp explosion in William Pit's Main Band workings at Whitehaven killed 32 people, including 15 boys and 2 girls, and seventeen pit ponies — one of at least fourteen serious explosions recorded at the pit over its working life. |
18 October 1823 | Explosion | Cumbria | 32 |
| William Pit Explosion, 1839 Firedamp that had gone undetected since the previous Saturday exploded when a boy carrying a naked candle followed the overman into workings a mile and a half from the shaft — killing between 21 and 23 men and boys, most from one small stretch of New Houses. |
18 February 1839 | Explosion | Cumbria | 23 |
| William Pit Explosion, 1941 A genuinely unusual disaster: water gas, produced when water was poured onto glowing coal in a sealed-off fire area at William Pit, accumulated in a confined space and exploded, killing twelve. |
3 June 1941 | Explosion | Cumbria | 12 |
| William Pit underground fire, 1826 On 3 January 1826 fire broke out in an underground engine room at William Pit, Whitehaven, and its smoke spread through the workings, suffocating nine. The dead ranged from a boy of thirteen to a man of seventy-eight, and three were in their sixties. It was the third disaster at the pit in five years. |
3 Jan 1826 | Fire | Cumbria | 9 |
| Willington Colliery Boiler Explosion, 1867 A boiler exploded at Willington Colliery on 2 January 1867 and killed three of those working at the surface: George Farnaby, a fireman of eighteen, George Young, a screenman of seventeen, and George Webster, a screen boy of eleven. All three deaths were at the pit bank rather than underground. |
2 January 1867 | Machinery | County Durham | 3 |
| Windsor Colliery Shaft Accident, 1902 A working stage collapsed during shaft-sinking at Windsor Colliery, Abertridwr, dropping eight men into a flooded sump and drowning six of them. |
3 June 1902 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Caerphilly | 6 |
| Wood Pit Explosion, 1878 An underground gas explosion at Wood Pit, Haydock, killed 189 men and boys — one of the deadliest mining disasters in English history, and the worst to strike the Haydock Collieries complex. |
7 June 1878 | Explosion | Lancashire | 189 |
| Woodhorn Colliery explosion A repairing shift of thirteen men was setting steel roof girders in the Main Seam at Woodhorn when firedamp, accumulated over a weekend of reduced ventilation, was ignited by a naked light. All thirteen died. |
13 August 1916 | Explosion | Northumberland | 13 |
| Workington Colliery Inundation, 1837 On the evening of 28 July 1837 the sea burst into the workings of Workington Colliery, which had been driven 1,500 yards out under it with only about 150 feet of strata above. The Isabella, Union and Lady pits were submerged and 27 men and boys drowned, along with a comparable number of horses. The danger had been common talk in the town for months, and the owner had been written to about it. |
28 July 1837 | Flooding / Inundation | Cumbria | 27 |
| Wylam Colliery Boiler Explosion, 1865 A boiler explosion at Wylam Colliery killed three workers, including a 13-year-old boy, and was reported at the time in the local press. |
27 October 1865 | Machinery | Northumberland | 3 |
| Wynnstay Colliery Explosion (1863) A fireman firing a shot in an upbrow ignited accumulated gas, killing thirteen men and boys and injuring six more -- the first of three fatal explosions to strike this colliery within a decade. |
9 December 1863 | Explosion | Wrexham | 13 |
| Wynnstay Colliery Explosion (1868) An explosion following the replacement of a ventilation door with a brick stopping killed ten men -- the second of three fatal explosions to strike this colliery within a decade. |
30 September 1868 | Explosion | Wrexham | 10 |
| Wynnstay Colliery Explosion (1873) Insufficiently bored and improperly rammed shot holes let gas from two shots ignite, killing seven men and boys -- the third of three fatal explosions to strike this colliery within a decade. |
24 April 1873 | Explosion | Wrexham | 7 |
| Yew Tree Colliery Explosion, 1858 A firedamp explosion in Yew Tree Colliery's Crombuke mine, caused by a skipped safety inspection, killed 25 men and boys -- the worst mining disaster in Tyldesley's history. |
11 December 1858 | Explosion | Lancashire | 25 |
| Yniscedwyn Colliery runaway, 1892 At six in the evening of 24 August 1892 the night shift at Yniscedwyn Colliery was waiting to ride down the steep new drift in a journey of carriages held by a scotch. One of the men kicked the scotch away before the engine was manned, the journey ran away down the 1-in-3 incline, crashed into timbers and brought down the roof, killing six men and injuring three. The inquest held the dead man who started it responsible. |
24 August 1892 | Haulage / Transport | Powys | 6 |
| Ynisdavid Colliery Explosion, 1856 An explosion of gas in the Big Vein at Ynisdavid Colliery, Cwmavon, on 24 May 1856 killed twelve colliers. Eight were burnt and mutilated and four died of the effects of gas and their injuries; they were found lying within a short distance of one another. The ground was known to be dangerous, safety lamps only were allowed, and two large Struvé ventilators were being erected but were not yet finished. |
24 May 1856 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 12 |
| Ynysfeio Colliery gas explosion, 1875 An explosion of gas at Ynysfeio Colliery, Treherbert, fatally injured two men in 1875. Welsh Coal Mines dates the explosion to 22 August and records that John David Thomas, 45, and David Lodwig, 37, died on 7 September; the Inspector's report, as listed by the Durham Mining Museum, records the deaths of the labourers D. Lodwick and J. Thomas on that day. Neither source says where in the mine it happened or what fired the gas. |
22 August 1875 (deaths recorded 7 September) | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Ynysfeio Colliery runaway journey, 1892 At a quarter past three on the afternoon of 18 January 1892 the tail rope broke on a full journey of trams going down a steep incline at Ynysfeio Colliery, Treherbert. The journey ran wild to the bottom. Thomas Griffiths, the rider, and Gwillym Morgan, a collier riding in an empty tram in the middle of the full journey, were killed in the wreckage. |
1892 | Haulage / Transport | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Ynyshir Colliery roof fall, 1889 On 12 October 1889 the roof came down in a stall turning off a heading in the Two Feet Nine seam at Ynyshir Standard Colliery, killing three: David Jones, thirty-nine, Joseph Jones, a collier's boy of sixteen, and Thomas Griffiths, thirty-seven. The heading was double timbered and cogged, but the roof broke away along a slip parallel to the rib and swept out two cogs and several pairs of timbers. |
12 October 1889 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 3 |