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.

Cause

An explosion of firedamp in a poorly ventilated pit worked with naked candles

Contributing factors

Ventilation poor enough for firedamp to accumulate through a working day unnoticed. Naked candles as the men's only light. A furnace shaft, which meant an open fire underground, and stables and standing coal that caught and spread the fire afterwards.

What happened

About 220 men and boys, from ten years old to fifty-nine, went down on the morning of Thursday 19 February 1857. At noon twenty-two of them came up to eat at home; the other two hundred took their dinner underground. They had barely finished when, at about twenty past twelve, the pit exploded. A sheet of flame went up the shaft and lit and shook the country for miles. One of the cages was blown clean out of the second shaft, and smoke, dust and fire rose from the third so thickly it could be seen from miles off. Underground the doors were shattered, the roof had come in, the furnace and its arches were in ruins, the stables were alight, and the solid coal in the third shaft had caught and was sending burning coal down the sides. It is thought most of the men were killed at once by the explosion or by the roof falling; a great many of the rest died of the afterdamp.

Rescue & recovery

The mine was on fire and the safety lamps showed gas a short distance off, so a second and larger explosion was expected at any moment. A party of rescuers, mostly volunteers, went down the second shaft anyway and brought out nineteen men, scorched and injured; two of them later died. The search was called off at half past seven that evening when it was plain there was nobody else to bring up and the fire was blocking the way. The fire brigade could do nothing against a column of flame ninety-eight feet high coming out of the third shaft, and a crowd estimated at ten to fifteen thousand gathered to watch. The next morning the first and second shafts were capped with planks and clay and the flames sank, but smoke still poured from the third. A nearby stream was then diverted into the mine to drown the fire, which worked and made recovering the bodies impossible for months. A hundred and seventy-nine had been exhumed by July 1857, in a state The Engineer called inevitably awful; the last of the 185 recovered came out on 16 July. Four were never found.

Investigation & inquiry

The disaster was found to have been caused by a firedamp explosion in a pit whose ventilation was inadequate. No detailed account of the formal inquiry has been read for this record.

Legal & regulatory aftermath

The Engineer reported in July 1857 that the proprietors, notwithstanding their own great loss, had done what they could for the bereaved and had charged no rent on the men's houses since the explosion.

Memorials & commemoration

The unidentified dead were buried together in a large grave in the churchyard of All Saints, Darfield, where the Lundhill memorial stands over them. The explosion left ninety widows and two hundred and twenty children without a father.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Capping the first two shafts with planks and clay brought the flames down but did not stop the smoke from the third, which had been left open. A nearby stream was then diverted into the mine to flood it and drown the fire — which worked, and made it impossible to recover the bodies for months afterwards. ¹
• The explosion left about two hundred and twenty orphaned children and ninety widows in a village that had been farming country a generation earlier. ¹
• The Durham Mining Museum's roll names the dead with their ages and records them buried in Darfield churchyard; the youngest on it are boys of thirteen. The four never traced are among those commemorated by the memorial over the mass grave. ²
• Of the 189 killed, 120 were adults and 69 were children. ³
• The disaster is entered in the Mines Inspector Charles Morton's Report of the Working of the Coal Mines Inspection Act (18 & 19 Vict. c.108) in Yorkshire for the year ending 31 December 1857, published by HMSO in 1858, at page 134, which includes a map showing where the victims were eventually found. ³
• Hemingfield Colliery, also known as Elsecar Low pit, was working the same Barnsley seam and employed the neighbours of the Lundhill men, and had suffered its own underground explosion only in December 1852. ³

Related terminology

Mining terms this disaster is structurally linked to, with the nature of the relationship.

• Afterdamp (contextual relationship)
  Most of the men not killed outright by the blast or the roof died of it.
• Cage (contextual relationship)
  One of the cages was blown out of the second shaft by the force of the explosion.
• Firedamp (contextual relationship)
  The gas that exploded, gathered through a working day in a pit whose ventilation could not clear it, and lit by one of the men's candles.
• Safety Lamp (contextual relationship)
  The rescuers' lamps showed gas a short distance from where they were working, which is why a second and larger explosion was expected at any moment while they were bringing men out.
• Shaft (contextual relationship)
  The first two shafts were capped with planks and clay the next morning to smother the fire; the third was left open and went on pouring smoke, so a stream was diverted into the mine instead.

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this disaster.

Sources

1. (secondary) Lundhill Colliery explosion — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Lundhill Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
3. (secondary) Lundhill Colliery Disaster, 19th February 1857 — Friends of Hemingfield Colliery
4. (secondary) Lundhill Colliery — Grace's Guide to British Industrial History

Record created: 10 September 2026 · Last researched: 10 September 2026