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.
45 disasters in the 1900s, of 505.
| Disaster | Date | Type | Region | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Wingate Grange Colliery explosion, 1906 Wingate Grange, a colliery of some 1,200 underground workers in east Durham, exploded on the night shift of Sunday 14 October 1906, killing twenty-six men. The inspectors' report traced the deaths seam by seam -- a shifter blown into the downcast shaft, a stoneman killed by violence and burning on the engine plane, five men lost to afterdamp in the Five Quarter. At the inquest the Home Office was represented by counsel, and the evidence turned on a shot fired to clear a stone fall, and on the single naked light allowed in a pit otherwise worked with safety lamps. |
14 October 1906 | Explosion | County Durham | 26 |
| 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 |
| Genwen Colliery explosion, 1907 An explosion in the Four Feet headings of the small Genwen Colliery near Llanelli on 5 March 1907 killed four miners, and two volunteers who went down the return airway afterwards died in the afterdamp. Screw-locked lamps, no lampman and poorly organised exploration drew criticism; the manager was fined and the pit was abandoned. |
5 March 1907 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 6 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Washington Glebe Colliery explosion, 1908 The Glebe Pit at Washington was four years old when it exploded on 20 February 1908, killing fourteen people and five ponies. Its shafts had been sunk through the surface deposits by the freezing process to the Low Main seam at 114 fathoms, and it was in the Low Main, where whole working had begun only sixteen months before, that the explosion started and stayed. The inspector's report set out the shotfiring with permitted explosives fired by battery, and noted that the air had not been measured since five days before the explosion. |
20 February 1908 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 14 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Big Pit explosion (1908) A localised underground explosion killed three men. |
11 December 1908 | Explosion | Torfaen | 3 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Gurnos Colliery Explosion, 1909 A shot fired at the face just before 5 am ignited gas and engulfed the men nearby in flames, fatally burning the collier who had prepared it and burning the fireman. A repairer working further off, unhurt by the blast, set off towards the return airway rather than out of the mine and was later found a few yards away, overcome by gas. |
17 December 1909 | Explosion | Powys | 2 |