MineArchiveEntrapment disasters
People trapped underground or in workings, regardless of cause.
See all disasters, including filtering by type.
48 disasters, in date order.
| Disaster | Date | Type | Region | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1810s | ||||
| Pentrefron Colliery flooding, 1819 Pentrefron Colliery at Coedpoeth was drowned out by water in September 1819; two men drowned, and a third, John Evans, was found alive in a roof cavity after twelve days, having lived on candles. |
27 September 1819 | Flooding / Inundation | Wrexham | 2 |
| 1830s | ||||
| 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 | 26 |
| 1840s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1850s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1860s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1870s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1880s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Drakewalls Mine Entombment and Rescue, 1889 Two miners filling a worked-out area at Drakewalls Mine were buried when the sand they were releasing ran too fast. After two nights of failed attempts, a second rescue led by the pitman Thomas Chapman blasted a channel down to them with small charges of dynamite, and both were pulled out alive at midnight after food and water had been lowered 18 fathoms to them. |
5 February 1889 | Other | Cornwall | 0 |
| 1890s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Glanmwrwg Colliery inrush, 1899 On the morning of Saturday 9 December 1899 a collier at Glanmwrwg Colliery, Llangennech, holed into old flooded workings. One of the two men caught at the deepest level was drowned; the other hung by one arm from a roof timber for nearly eleven hours until three of his fellow workmen swam in and pulled him out. |
9 December 1899 | Flooding / Inundation | Carmarthenshire | 1 |
| 1900s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Caradog Vale Colliery inundation, 1906 On the afternoon of Tuesday 26 June 1906 the face of a stall at Caradog Vale Colliery, a small level near Gilfach Goch, broke through into flooded old workings. Four colliers drowned, and two more survived six days trapped in the dark before rescuers reached them. The agent and manager were tried for manslaughter and acquitted. |
26 June 1906 | Flooding / Inundation | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 4 |
| Roachburn Colliery inrush, 1908 About noon on 28 January 1908 the face of a working driven up to the outcrop under Denton Fell gave way, and roughly 90,000 cubic yards of saturated peat, sand, clay and water poured into Roachburn Colliery near Hallbankgate. About 120 men were underground; all but three got out. Two of the three were officials who had gone back for the third. No body was recovered, so no inquest could be held, and the Home Office ordered a formal investigation instead. |
28 January 1908 | Flooding / Inundation | Cumbria | 3 |
| 1910s | ||||
| Water Haigh Colliery shaft disaster, 1910 During the sinking of Water Haigh Colliery at Woodlesford, near Leeds, the sides of No. 1 shaft collapsed on the morning of 7 May 1910, burying and killing six men before the pit had raised any coal. |
7 May 1910 | Winding / Shaft Accident | West Yorkshire | 6 |
| Water Haigh Colliery shaft collapse, November 1910 Six months after the shaft disaster of May 1910, the sides of No. 1 shaft at Water Haigh gave way again on 17 November 1910. Four of the ten men at the bottom were caught by the falling shale, timber and iron rings: one was killed outright and another died of his injuries in Leeds Infirmary. |
17 November 1910 | Winding / Shaft Accident | West Yorkshire | 2 |
| Bug and Wink Colliery roof fall and rescue attempt, 1910 In December 1910 a fall of roof buried Charles Marshall, a 23-year-old shifter, at the Bug and Wink colliery, Coleorton. His mate William Birch freed himself and kept digging for him through three more falls, until Marshall was covered completely; he was dead when he was got out, and Birch received the Edward Medal. |
14 December 1910 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Leicestershire | 1 |
| 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 |
| 1920s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Fleets Colliery inrush, 1929 On Friday 1 March 1929 a shot fired to hole into a disused working above Fleets No. 1 Pit, Tranent, released a torrent of water and black damp. George Johnstone, 27, waded back through water to his chin to warn fifty men working deeper in. All were brought out alive that afternoon. The company's officials were later prosecuted. |
1 March 1929 | Flooding / Inundation | East Lothian | 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 |
| 1930s | ||||
| Brynamman Colliery Inrush, 1933 Water broke into a slant at Brynamman Colliery, trapping miners in the dark and flooding the roadway out. Two colliers, Thomas Thomas and Daff Davies, led four men and seven boys aged fourteen to sixteen to safety, Thomas going back for a group still trapped and coming out last. He received the Edward Medal, later exchanged for the George Cross. |
21 September 1933 | Flooding / Inundation | Carmarthenshire | 0 |
| 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 |
| 1940s | ||||
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Newlands Colliery roof fall rescue, 1944 A heavy roof fall at Newlands Colliery, Kenfig Hill, in September 1944 trapped two colliers; the under-manager William Jenkins, already twenty-two hours underground, was trapped and injured by further falls but brought both men out, and was awarded the Edward Medal in Silver. |
21 September 1944 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Bridgend | 0 |
| 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 |
| 1950s | ||||
| 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 |
| Point of Ayr Colliery shaft-sinking accident, 1952 Six men employed by a civil engineering contractor were killed on the night shift of 4 July 1952 while sinking a new shaft at Point of Ayr Colliery under compressed air, when the air lock at the shaft top failed about 96 feet down and the workings flooded. |
4 July 1952 | Winding / Shaft Accident | Flintshire | 6 |
| 1960s | ||||
| Barony Colliery shaft collapse, 1962 On 8 November 1962 No. 2 shaft at Barony Colliery, west of Auchinleck in Ayrshire, collapsed as the ground around it caved in, burying four men 1,300 feet down and bringing the headframe into the shaft mouth. The bodies were never recovered, the colliery stopped producing, and it took a campaign and a new shaft to reopen it four years later. |
8 November 1962 | Collapse / Roof Fall | East Ayrshire | 4 |
| 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 |
| 1970s | ||||
| Cwmgwili Colliery Roof Fall, 1971 A sudden fall of roof in a heading being driven with a continuous miner buried three of the five men working there at Cwmgwili, then one of the Coal Board's most productive and profitable collieries. The other two escaped unhurt. |
7 September 1971 | Collapse / Roof Fall | Carmarthenshire | 3 |
| 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 |
| 2000s | ||||
| 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 |