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.
34 disasters in the 1920s, of 505.
| Disaster | Date | Type | Region | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Medomsley Colliery cage accident, 1923 On 24 February 1923 the ascending cage in Medomsley Colliery's Busty shaft left its guides about 80 feet below the surface, struck a cast-iron girder, and fell, killing the two onsetters and six shaft lads riding in it. The inquiry blamed cage shoes left in use too long against a guide partly renewed with rail of a different section. |
24 February 1923 | Winding / Shaft Accident | County Durham | 8 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Rhos Amman Colliery explosion, 1924 At about 11.30 p.m. on 4 January 1924 an explosion destroyed a small tin cabin near the mouth of a new slant being driven at Rhos Amman Colliery, near Brynamman, killing seven men gathered there at the change of shift. Explosives in the cabin were thought to have been thawed at its open fire. |
4 January 1924 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 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 |
| Ponthenry Colliery outburst, 1924 On the evening of 3 September 1924 a sudden outburst of fine coal and gas in 19 East, Pumpquart seam, of Ponthenry Colliery's Glynhir slant killed five men; two more were seriously gassed. Over twenty survived by lying face down, and eight rescuers were later honoured by the Carnegie Hero Trust. |
3 September 1924 | Gas / Asphyxiation | Carmarthenshire | 5 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Montagu View Pit disaster, 1925 An inrush at the View Pit of Montagu Colliery, Scotswood, on the morning of 30 March 1925. Three shots fired to straighten a coal face broke the last six inches of coal holding back the flooded workings of the Paradise Pit, abandoned in 1848, and water under about 80 pounds per square inch filled the workings. Of the 148 men and boys in the seam, 38 died: seventeen suffocated by blackdamp before the water reached them, the rest drowned. The public inquiry found that plans of the old workings existed but were not in the colliery's hands, and its recommendations reshaped the law on abandoned-mine plans. |
30 March 1925 | Flooding / Inundation | Tyne and Wear | 38 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 | — |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |