https://minearchive.co.uk/feed.xml 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/gentlewomans-pipe/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A lead mine near Matlock Bridge, named in Benjamin Bryan's list of Matlock lead mines working in 1807-09.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/guy-mine-alport/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

One of the Alport Mining Company's five hydraulic pumping engines; its shaft ran in on the night of its own 1852 auction sale.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/kirkmeadow-mine-stanton/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Its exploring cavers never found documentary proof of the shaft's name, working instead from a field name, 'Kirkmeadow', that may or may not match the old workings below it.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/mawstone-mine-youlgreave/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A 1932 gas explosion here killed eight men, five miners and three would-be rescuers, in one of the last major disasters of Derbyshire's lead-mining industry.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/wheels-rake-wheelhouse-shaft/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Cavers spent years digging through the collapsed Shining Sough here before breaking through into the neighbouring Broadmeadow Mine's own workings.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/broadmeadow-lead-mine-alport/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A drift lead mine at Alport with a hydraulic engine chamber deep underground, taking water from the river via raised launders.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/cumberland-mine-matlock-bath/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A show cavern at Matlock Bath that, per a Mine Explorer Society account, forms one end of the same complex ore deposit as the neighbouring Wapping Mine.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/dimple-mine-matlock/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Matlock Bank lead mine that Farey recorded in 1809 as running the only mine steam-engine then working in Derbyshire.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/prospect-lead-mine-alport/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A lead mine at Alport recorded by the Derbyshire Historic Environment Record.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/wapping-mine-matlock-bath/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A former 18th/19th-century lead mine and 1950s fluorspar mine at Matlock Bath, forming one end of the same ore deposit as the neighbouring Cumberland Cavern.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/alexandra-quarry/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A remote Nantlle Valley slate quarry on Moel Tryfan that only became viable once a branch of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway reached it.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/old-pit-radstock/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Sunk in 1793 this was the founding pit of the once-75-mine Somerset Coalfield whose story is now told at the Radstock Museum.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/ramsley-mine/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Dartmoor's Sticklepath Fault split the same mineral lodes worked here as at neighbouring Belstone, and the derelict brick flues are still crusted white.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/east-law-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Carluke colliery returned in the official 1880 list of collieries at work under Loundon and Miller.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/houseslip-mine-tow-law/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Houseslip Mine at Tow Law, returned in the Durham Mining Museum's UK colliery index as Houseslip (Ganister).

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/waterland-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Carluke colliery returned in the official 1880 list of collieries at work under William Hamilton and Co.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/glanamman-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A shaft that employed seven men in 1907 grew to over two hundred under a one-colliery company, only to be among the first pits the new National Coal Board shut.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/ystalyfera-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

When the Coal Board closed it in 1957, its own divisional chairman said there was 'no rational excuse' for keeping the pit going.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/gurnos-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Its first slant was an older mine's, Wernplemis, abandoned a generation before, and after it closed in 1928 it was kept on for sixteen years just to pump water.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/tirbach-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Its Big Vein could be seventy feet thick in one place and absent a few yards on, so the thick patches were worked over two or three times.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/felinfran-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

To ventilate its Graigola workings it pumped out a pit abandoned forty years earlier and ran its return air through the old shaft bottom under a nickel refinery's yard.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/cwmgwili-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

In 1966 this NCB drift made more profit per ton than any other colliery in the country, and it outlived its official closure by fourteen years.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/hendreforgan-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

In the 1820s it hauled coal underground with a George Stephenson engine and used its steam to ventilate a divided shaft, a system other collieries copied.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/gilwen-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Sunk by an ironworks in 1860 and reached by its own locomotives over the hillside, it outlived the ironworks to employ 400 men in the 1920s.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/ffaldydre-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

It was closed in 1963 not for lack of coal but because the neighbouring Glyncastle pit could not keep its men, so Ffaldydre's miners were moved there.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/brynamman-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

When water flooded one of its slants in 1933, a 21-year-old collier went back for a trapped group and brought them out last, and later swapped his Edward Medal for the George Cross on condition it stayed in Wales.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/cawdor-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Worked on and off for over a century from a Red Vein outcrop on Mynydd y Betws, it was reported with 499 men in 1930 in the same year a trade paper said it had been shut for three years.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/glyncastle-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Its owners sank shafts because their levels found only soft coal, then found the deeper seams soft too, and a thick clod above the next one fouled every ton.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/abernant-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Sunk to be a 2,000-man super pit working the Peacock seam from the deepest shafts in South Wales, it found the Peacock unworkable and survived for 25 years on a seam 1,200 feet up the shaft.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/cwmllynfell-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

By January 1956 its output per manshift had fallen to 5.8 hundredweight, the worst in the United Kingdom, and when the NCB closed it the miners asked to run it themselves as a co-operative.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/cwmteg-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Its landlord refused to cut the penny-a-ton railway wayleave while water from an older mine next door flooded in, and within a decade of reaching 280 men the company was in liquidation.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/glynmoch-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Victorian level abandoned in 1883 that was pumped out and reopened as Ystrad in 1949, and kept working through eight changes of owner until 2000.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/noyadd-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Opened in 1901 and employing well over a hundred men by 1908, it was abandoned after barely eight years of work.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/tir-edmund-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Its coal was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and a Neath poet wrote verse about it, yet it closed in 1895 because the coal it was raising had gone poor.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/new-wernddu-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A drift that grew from 36 men in 1905 to several hundred by the early 1920s, and whose sources cannot agree whether it closed in 1922 or 1929.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/duffryn-rhondda-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The Afan Valley's biggest steam-coal pit, its No.2 shaft deepened to 1,504 yards in 1962, four years before the NCB closed it as unworkable by machine.

https://minearchive.co.uk/mines/talyfan-colliery/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The same patch of hillside above Pontarddulais was worked as Tal-y-fan-fach, Talyfan, Cae and Glynhir over eighty years, and even the plans admit it was 'Glynhir formerly Cae or Talyfan'.

https://minearchive.co.uk/disasters/werfa-colliery-explosion-1849/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

On Monday 14 May 1849 a man carrying a Davy lamp went into a heading at Werfa Colliery, above Aberdare, that was fouled with gas, and a boy followed him with a candle. The gas exploded at the candle. Two young colliers were killed and three more died of their burns; twelve were injured in all. It was the colliery's second explosion in a week, and the inquest jury asked for a fireman to inspect the workings before the men went in.

https://minearchive.co.uk/disasters/bryndu-colliery-explosion-1852/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

One Thursday morning in November 1852 three men and a youth at Bryndu Colliery, Kenfig Hill, went into their workings with candles before the fireman had examined them with a safety lamp for firedamp gathered in the night. The gas exploded at once and killed all four, the youngest a boy of twelve.

https://minearchive.co.uk/disasters/bryndu-colliery-explosion-1853/ 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Two days before Christmas 1853 John Williams, a collier of forty-one, went against orders into a part of Bryndu Colliery known to be gassy. His naked light fired the gas, and the explosion killed him, his eleven-year-old son Rees and three others. It was the colliery's second fatal explosion at a naked light in thirteen months.