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.
33 disasters in the 1910s, of 505.
| Disaster | Date | Type | Region | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Tylorstown No.8 Pit roof fall, 1913 At about 2 a.m. on 8 April 1913 a massive fall at a ripping lip in No. 8 Pit, Tylorstown, where double timbers were being set after an earlier fall, buried five men. Four died, two of them brothers; the rescue took about eleven hours through further falls, and one man survived with broken legs. |
8 April 1913 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 4 |
| Carr House Colliery inrush, 1913 Water from old flooded headings of the neighbouring Aldwarke Main Colliery burst into a narrow heading in the Parkgate seam at Car House Colliery, Rotherham, on 16 June 1913, drowning eight men. Boreholes had been drilled ahead of the face, but the plans were a few feet out and the barrier left was only three feet. |
16 June 1913 | Flooding / Inundation | South Yorkshire | 8 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Glynea Colliery explosion, 1913 Four days after Senghenydd, on 18 October 1913, a blown-out shot of Swalite ignited firedamp in the Fiery seam at Glynea Colliery near Llanelli. Nine men eating their food outbye of the brattice were burned and eight died over the following fortnight; criminal proceedings and civil claims followed. |
18 October 1913 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 8 |
| 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 |
| Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery explosion, 1914 The ventilating fan at Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery, near Barnsley, was stopped for about sixteen minutes on the afternoon of Saturday 30 May 1914 to be changed over from gas to steam. Gas gathered at the face in William Fisher's gate; when the fan restarted it was carried over an electric coal cutter whose switch cover was held by one bolt instead of six and was not flame-tight. Twelve men died. The jury found the whole of the management 'very negligent, but not criminally so'. |
30 May 1914 | Explosion | South Yorkshire | 12 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |