Mines with Faults and Fractures

44 linked mines · Geology: Faults and Fractures

Listed only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis for the connection — not every mine where this geology might plausibly apply.

Mine	Region	Worked	Commodities	Connection
Aberbeeg Colliery	Blaenau Gwent	Sunk about 1860–Abandoned 19 April 1929	Coal	(well documented example) The Llanhilleth fault dropped the Brithdir seam about ninety metres at Aberbeeg and thinned its section, which is the reason this pit was sunk rather than the seam being taken from levels as it was to the north.
Alderley Edge Mines	Cheshire	Bronze Age–1926	Copper, Lead, Cobalt	(well documented example) Exploratory levels were driven to relocate mineralised ground after a major fault was struck around 1862.
Alum Bay Sand and Copperas Workings	Isle of Wight	1561–No reliable date for the end of extraction has been located.	Silica Sand, Pyrite	(well documented example) Alpine folding turned the Palaeocene and Eocene beds on end, which is why a long stratigraphic sequence is readable across a few hundred metres of cliff — and why the bay looks the way it does.
Argyll Colliery, Machrihanish	Argyll and Bute	1946–1967	Coal	(well documented example) Faulting is the whole story of this colliery's decline: the 1960 crush closed everything beyond 200 yards from the mine foot, stone drifts were driven to get through the West Parkfergus fault, and every development after that ran into disturbed ground, several faults bringing running sand and heavy water into the workings.
Auchenharvie Colliery	North Ayrshire	From 1678; the Newcomen engine house dates from 1719–Early 20th century	Coal	(well documented example) The Capon Craig Gaw, a whin dyke, was the colliery's eastern boundary and its safeguard — a wall of igneous rock holding back flooded workings, which both leases forbade anyone to cut.
Augill Mine	Cumbria	By 1843–1896	Lead	(well documented example) The record describes mineralisation filling numerous small cracks in dolomitised limestone immediately adjacent to a mineralised overthrust considered a continuation of the Dent Fault System — the fault, not a vein or a bed, being what controls the ore here.
Beezy Mine	North Yorkshire	Before 1765–Before 1861 (still listed 1863-74)	Lead	(well documented example) The strings diverge from the Oxnop fault system, whose subparallel faults form the faulted basin described by the BGS memoir; the fractures are the mineralised structures.
Bonville's Court Colliery	Pembrokeshire	1842 or 1855 (sources differ)–1930	Anthracite	(well documented example) The take was bounded by the Harbour and Erroxhill faults, and bad faulting together with the long haulage roads it forced is given as the reason the colliery closed.
Bradda Head Mines	Isle of Man	Bronze Age–1904	Copper, Lead, Silver	(well documented example) The Bradda lode is nearly vertical, with quartz and fault-breccia walls 30 to 50ft wide.
Brightling and Mountfield Gypsum Mines	East Sussex	from 1876 (Mountfield); 1963 (Brightling)	Gypsum, Anhydrite	(well documented example) Unusually, faulting here is what makes the deposit workable rather than what disrupts it: east-south-east normal faults raised the blocks that carry the best gypsum into reach.
Caerbryn Colliery	Carmarthenshire	c. 1850s–1930s	Anthracite	(well documented example) The Hendre fault bounded the take underground from Emlyn Colliery.
Camerton Colliery	Somerset	1781–1950	Coal	(well documented example) The Radstock Slide Fault and the general fracturing of the Somerset field displaced the seams so severely that following one across a fault was a large part of the cost of working here.
Church Burn Mine	Northumberland	By 1854, possibly earlier–After 1884	Lead	(well documented example) The record describes the ore as occupying three roughly north-south faults cutting Stainmore Formation rocks in the footwall of the Stublick Fault, and the paper's central argument is that this belt of mineralisation is structurally and genetically tied to that Carboniferous fault line rather than to the Northern Pennine Orefield 15 km away.
Cilely Colliery	Rhondda Cynon Taf	1872–1950	Coal	(well documented example) A sixty-yard fault stood between the No. 2 pit and its steam coal, which had to be won by driving a cross-measures drift through it.
Cliff Rigg Quarry	North Yorkshire	Quarrying established by the late 17th century–About 1918; further extraction in the 1970s	Whinstone	(well documented example) The quarry works an intrusive dyke — a sheet of hard igneous rock driven up through softer sediments along a fracture — and the whole shape of the working follows that narrow, steeply-inclined band, as this record's geology explains.
Coalisland Collieries	County Tyrone	First reported 1654–Largely ended by 1920; final workings to the 1960s	Coal, Fireclay	(well documented example) Severe faulting broke the East Tyrone coalfield into ground that was expensive and unpredictable to follow — the reason a field that looked promising never delivered.
Cow Green Mine	County Durham	Veins worked from the late 18th century–1954	Barite, Lead	(well documented example) The veins here occupy faults that branch south from the major Teesdale Fault, and the fault's downthrow of up to 30 m to the east is part of the record's own geological description.
Diglake Colliery	Staffordshire	1870 (earlier pit 1733 to c. 1850)–June 1905	Coal	(well documented example) A fault crossing the shafts threw the strata about 80 yards down to the east, so the Seven Feet Banbury was met east of the shafts 45 yards above the Eight Feet to the west.
Dunkerton Colliery	Somerset	1904–1925 or 1933 (sources differ)	Coal	(historical documentary reference) Scoped to the district: the Somerset coalfield's steeply inclined, folded and faulted measures are the reason its collieries stayed small, which is the problem Dunkerton's scale was meant to overcome.
Eastern United Colliery	Forest of Dean	1910–30 January 1959	Coal	(well documented example) Monoclinal folding of the strata was the colliery's defining problem: it lost the seams in the main headings, and in 1914 made the western portion of the gale unworkable altogether.
Egton Quarry	North Yorkshire	Working by 1914–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Whinstone	(well documented example) A quarry on an intrusive dyke — a narrow, steeply-inclined sheet of hard basalt driven up through softer sediments along a fracture, about sixty feet across here, as this record's geology sets out.
Fairykirk Quarry	Fife	Working by the mid-19th century–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Whinstone	(historical documentary reference) The quarry lies within a site notified for the Midland Valley Sill-complex, a body of quartz-dolerite intruded through the Carboniferous sequence — the intrusive geology this record's own section describes, with the caveat it carries.
Goathland Whinstone Mine	North Yorkshire	In the returns from 1894–1930	Whinstone	(well documented example) The mine worked the Cleveland Dyke, a near-vertical sheet of igneous rock intruded along a fracture across the North York Moors and followed underground rather than stripped.
Greenside Mine	Cumbria	1825–1962	Lead, Silver	(well documented example) Worked a single mineral vein filling a north-south fault running through the east ridge.
Gurney Slade Quarry	Somerset	Mid 19th century–Still worked	Limestone	(well documented example) Fissures and joints in the old limestone surface are filled from above with later sediment — neptunian dykes — and a small fault carries the block of Lower Jurassic rock at the top of the section.
Hay Head Quarry	West Midlands	By 1593–Abandoned by 1865	Limestone	(well documented example) The Silurian beds end abruptly eastward against the Eastern Boundary Fault of the Black Country coalfield, which throws them against Coal Measures strata; Hay Head is the only place that displacement can be read in the landscape.
Holly Bank Colliery	Staffordshire	c. 1850 (as Essington Wood); 1895 (as Holly Bank)–December 1952	Coal, Ironstone	(well documented example) Production is said to have declined through geological faults, and the sister pit Hilton Main closed in 1968 when local faulting of the Eight Feet seam made mechanised faces uneconomic; 'slips' in roof and coal figure in most of the recorded fatal falls.
Kilmersdon Colliery	Somerset	February 1875 (coal working in the area documented from 1437)–August 1973	Coal	(historical documentary reference) Worked a geologically difficult and heavily faulted coalfield.
Langbaurgh Whinstone Mine	North Yorkshire	In the returns from 1882–Still returning igneous rock in 1950	Whinstone	(well documented example) The mine worked the Cleveland Dyke, a near-vertical sheet of igneous rock intruded along a fracture and cutting the sedimentary rocks of the moors, about eighty feet wide where it outcrops at Great Ayton.
Langness Mine	Isle of Man	Worked in the 19th century–Recorded as standing in 1902	Copper	(well documented example) The record turns on the relationship between the copper-bearing ground and the olivine-dolerite dykes cutting it — the question of whether such intrusions cut out a lode, argued over by Manx miners and tested at this site.
Leeswood Main Colliery	Flintshire	About 1861–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Coal, Cannel Coal	(well documented example) The workings lay between two large north-south faults, and a small fault crossing the nine-foot seam — drawn on the company's plan many yards from where it actually ran — was what separated the men from the water that killed them.
Longhoughton Quarry	Northumberland	Early 19th century–1974	Limestone, Whinstone	(well documented example) The quarry exposes the Great Whin Sill — a sheet of quartz-dolerite forced between the existing strata — with its chilled upper surface, rafts of country rock caught up and baked within it, and a calcite vein formed where the molten rock met the Great Limestone.
Minnie Pit	Staffordshire	1881 (sinking from 1883 on one account)–April 1930	Coal	(well documented example) The Seven Feet was undulating and cut by many faults, which forced pillar and stall working in one section.
New Rock Colliery	Somerset	1819–September 1968	Coal	(well documented example) The Radstock Syncline is cut by east–west thrust faults and north–south normal faults, the structural setting that made every Somerset shaft an expensive way to reach thin coal.
North Steelend Colliery	Fife	By 1880; reopened 1957–1896 (colliery); 1965 (private mine)	Coal	(historical documentary reference) A 1900 report on the Lethans coalfield beside Steelend describes the seams cut off to the north by a large fault skirting North Lethans farm.
Old Mills Colliery	Somerset	1860–1966	Coal	(well documented example) The Radstock Syncline and its thrust and normal faults are the structural setting that made every Somerset pit an expensive way to reach thin coal.
Parc Mine	Conwy	1855–1963	Lead, Zinc	(well documented example) The eastern limit of the underground workings is set by the Shale Vein, a substantial fault zone striking north-north-west and consisting mostly of pulverised black shale with scattered pockets of quartz and calcite carrying sphalerite — a structure that both bounded the ore and defined how far the mine could go.
Pleasley Colliery	Derbyshire	1873 (shaft sinking); 1877 (production)–1983	Coal	(historical documentary reference) A disturbed fault zone was encountered a short distance north-east of the shafts.
Seaham Colliery	County Durham	Sinking begun 13 April 1849; production from 1853–54–1988 (merged with Vane Tempest, 1983)	Coal, Fireclay	(well documented example) Faulting shaped the whole colliery: one fault near the shaft threw the Hutton No. 2 below the level of the Harvey, and another took three years of stone drivage to get through — the coal beyond it was named the Hutton Jubilee for the year it was finally reached.
Torr Works	Somerset	1930s–Still active	Limestone	(well documented example) The quarry cuts the southern flank of the Beacon Hill Pericline, the fold whose opposite flank is worked by Whatley Quarry.
Tyning Colliery	Somerset	1837–1909	Coal	(well documented example) The Radstock Slide Fault, along which the broken ends of one seam can lie 1,500 ft apart, is the structural fact that governs every pit in this group.
Weetslade Colliery	Tyne and Wear	1903–10 September 1966	Coal	(well documented example) Large faults cut the Bensham workings and changed the ventilation layout; fault planes carried water from the flooded Yard Seam above into the 3rd East District before the 1951 explosion.
Wenvoe Quarry	Vale of Glamorgan	1880s, on smaller workings mapped in 1878–79–2023 (an earlier phase ended by 1915)	Limestone	(well documented example) The worked limestone inlier is bounded on its eastern side by the Penarth Fault, which together with the westward dip is what left the durable limestone standing as a quarryable ridge above the surrounding mudstones.
Whatley Quarry	Somerset	1939–Still active	Limestone	(well documented example) The quarry cuts one flank of the Beacon Hill Pericline, a fold structure, and the BGS account records that minor faulting within the worked ground is significant.

Back to Faults and Fractures, or all Geology records.