All mines

Operating

Mines 1–100 of 840, A–Z (page 1 of 9).

MineRegionWorkedCommodities
Abercorris Slate Quarry
Its 1880s operator, the Abercorris Slate and Slab Company Limited, collapsed into the landmark 1887 court case Levy v Abercorris Slate and Slab Co, still cited today in English company law on the nature of a debenture.
Gwynedd Quarrying began on Craig-y-Fachddu Farm land in the mid-1840s.–Commercial slate extraction ended in the early 1950s. Slate
Abercwmeiddaw Slate Quarry
A pair of curious 'binocular' tunnels, bored side by side into the hillside in 1864, survive as the visible legacy of one of the world's first mechanical tunnel-boring machines -- a working prototype too hard to steer, abandoned after cutting barely 30 metres of rock.
Gwynedd Quarrying probably began in the 1840s.–Worked until 1938. Slate
Aberdaunant Mine
One of a chain of workings along the 6km Van lode, sold in 1868 to the same London company that ran the much larger, richer Van Mine nearby.
Powys 1800–late 1870s Lead, Copper
Aberllefenni Slate Quarry
Reputed to be the longest continually worked slate mine anywhere in the world, closing only in 2003 after roughly five centuries of intermittent-to-continuous production.
Gwynedd Slates from the site are recorded roofing Plas Aberllefenni as early as 1500–2003 Slate
Aberpergwm Colliery
A Vale of Neath anthracite colliery, still one of the last deep anthracite mines working in Wales.
Neath Port Talbot 1811–1985 (reopened 1996) Coal
Ackton Hall Colliery
Soldiers firing on a crowd at a Yorkshire colliery in 1893 killed two men and helped build the case for a new political party to represent working people in Parliament.
West Yorkshire Sunk from 1873–1985 Coal
Addiewell Oil Works
Built by James 'Paraffin' Young as the biggest oil works in the world in its day; anchors West Lothian's claim to be the birthplace of the global shale-oil industry, and its foundation stone was laid by the explorer David Livingstone.
West Lothian 1866–Refinery closed c.1921 Oil Shale
Adelaide Mine
A Cheshire rock-salt mine known for underground banquets in its 'Crystal Ballroom' chamber, flooded for good by a sudden 1928 water inrush.
Cheshire 1850–13 March 1928 (flooded) Salt
Afton Colliery
Afton takes its name from the River Afton, the same stream Robert Burns made famous in 'Sweet Afton' decades before the colliery itself was ever sunk.
East Ayrshire 1871–1948 Coal
Agecroft Colliery
The 4 January 1859 shaft disaster was caused by nothing more exotic than a slipped leather signal band, after which the engineman — with no other way to know the cage's position — trusted to the sound of a bell alone.
Greater Manchester No.1 and No.2 shafts sunk 1844–March 1991 Coal
Ailsa Craig
Ailsa Craig's granite reaches a genuinely global audience in a way almost no other British quarry can claim: it is the source rock for the great majority of the world's curling stones, used at essentially every Winter Olympics since 1924.
South Ayrshire 1850s (curling stones)–ongoing (curling stones); 1907 (roadstone, short-lived) Granite
Albion Colliery
A colliery whose 1894 explosion killed 290 men and boys, the second-worst death toll of any British colliery disaster.
Rhondda Cynon Taf sunk 1884; opened August 1887–September 1966 Coal
Alderley Edge Mines
Roman and Bronze Age copper workings on a National Trust escarpment, including a 1995 Roman coin hoard find
Cheshire Bronze Age–1926 Copper, Lead, Cobalt
Ale and Cakes Mine
One of the three founding mines of United Mines, whose combined workings, once rebuilt by the engineer John Taylor in the 1820s, struck what was at the time the richest copper lode in the world.
Cornwall by 1780–c. 1870 Copper, Tin
Allenheads Mines
Once the most productive lead mine in the North Pennines, yielding a seventh of the UK's lead output
Northumberland 1684–1896 Lead, Fluorspar
Alport Mines
A 1931 account by an Alport resident born in 1847 recorded that flue-cleaning workers ate only soft foods on the job, since anything handled directly risked carrying arsenic and lead residue from their hands to their mouths — a small, telling detail of just how contaminated the work really was.
Derbyshire 17th century–mid-1800s (mining); 1890s (smelting) Lead
Alum Bay Sand and Copperas Workings
Named for a mineral that was never there — Britain has no natural alum, and every attempt to make it here failed
Isle of Wight 1561–extraction now prohibited (SSSI) Silver Sand, Pyrite
Alva Silver Mine (Silver Glen)
Few British mines come with a genuine buried-treasure story attached: forty tons of silver ore hidden in barrels, smelted ingots concealed under floorboards, and a mine deliberately filled in to hide it all from the government after a failed rebellion — documented history rather than embellished folklore.
Clackmannanshire 1712–1716 (main bonanza); cobalt worked intermittently later Silver, Cobalt
Amberley Chalk Pits
Its 1948 tunnel played a Californian gold mine in a James Bond film, and the locomotives still wear the paint
West Sussex 1840s–1960s Chalk, Limestone
Ancaster Stone Quarries
Worked since Roman times, this cream oolitic limestone has dressed buildings from Windsor Castle to York railway station and is still quarried today.
Lincolnshire worked since at least the Roman period–still working Limestone
Argyll Colliery, Machrihanish
A colliery so far from anywhere that it was cheaper to ship its coal to Rotterdam and Copenhagen than to cart it to Glasgow
Argyll and Bute 1946–1967 Coal
Arn Gill Mine
A judge infamous for sending men to their deaths in the 1680s ended up, purely by descent, giving his name -- by way of his great-great-granddaughter -- to a Yorkshire lead mine two centuries later.
North Yorkshire 1751–1920 Lead
Ashburnham Furnace
The last furnace working anywhere in a region that had made Britain's iron for two thousand years, closed not by any single disaster but simply outlasting all its rivals
East Sussex Working by the 16th century–Blown out finally in early 1813 Iron
Askern Main Colliery
The two winding engines installed here in 1912 were, at the time, the largest of their kind anywhere in Britain.
South Yorkshire Sinking started April 1911–20 December 1991 Coal
Astley Green Colliery
The last deep mine sunk in the Manchester coalfield; its headgear is the only survivor on the entire Lancashire coalfield
Greater Manchester 1908–1970 Coal
Auchencairn Mine
Worked three times for three different minerals over two centuries, and defeated by flooding every time
Dumfries and Galloway Probably worked for copper in the 18th century–1961 Copper, Barite
Auchengeich Colliery
The worst Scottish mining disaster of the 20th century, caused by a jammed belt on an unattended ventilation fan
North Lanarkshire 1908–1965 Coal
Auchenharvie Colliery
A Newcomen engine was pumping here in 1719 — seven years after the first one ever built — and its engine house is still standing
North Ayrshire From 1678; the Newcomen engine house dates from 1719–Early 20th century Coal
Auchincruive Colliery
Its coal came from two directions at once -- cautious stoop-and-room under the streets of Prestwick, and full longwall panels run out beneath the Firth of Clyde itself.
South Ayrshire 1911-12–1973 Coal
Auchlochan Colliery
Auchlochan No. 9 went out closing the book on deep mining at Coalburn altogether -- and did it, by chance rather than design, on Friday the 13th.
South Lanarkshire 1890–1968 Coal, Fireclay
Baddesley Colliery
An engineer specified a brick casing around the underground boiler, the manager left it out, and thirty-two men died — the coroner's jury called it an error of judgement
Warwickshire Sunk from May 1850–1989 Coal
Bage Mine
A Derbyshire lead mine internationally known among mineralogists as the type locality of the rare lead minerals matlockite and phosgenite.
Derbyshire working by 1752–deep mining ceased 1907 Lead
Baggeridge Colliery
The last deep mine ever sunk in the Black Country — and the one whose closure ended three centuries of mining there for good
West Midlands First shaft sunk from 1899; production from 1912–2 March 1968 Coal
Bagtor Mine
For all its ambition -- a new 60-foot waterwheel, three shafts, fresh adits -- Bagtor's 1860s revival yielded just 15 tons of tin in its entire working life.
Devon 1851–1866 Tin, Copper
Ballachulish Slate Quarries
Once called the Slate Capital of Scotland; produced over half the country's domestic slate output at its peak
Highland 1693–1955 Slate
Ballacorkish Mine
Ballacorkish was already an old, exhausted, abandoned working by 1819 — and only became one of the Isle of Man's more successful 19th-century mines because a new Victorian company chose to look again at ground an earlier generation of miners had already given up on.
Isle of Man worked before 1819 (earlier phase, abandoned); revived 1862–1895 Lead, Silver, Zinc, Ochre
Ballycastle Coal Mines
Worked along dramatic sea cliffs for centuries; the last commercial coal extraction anywhere in Northern Ireland
County Antrim 16th century (earliest working); 1730s (organised export)–1967 (Craigfad Mine, final closure) Coal
Bampfylde Mine
A Devon copper mine on the River Mole with a rare surviving late-Victorian ore-processing complex, including the remains of at least five waterwheel pits.
Devon c.1420-1530 (medieval)–1885 Copper, Iron, Manganese
Bankend Colliery
A 1910 Medical Officer of Health survey of miners' housing recorded the row of company-owned houses at Bankend in unflinching physical detail -- stone-built, no damp course, unventilated wood floors, a pail privy per house -- a rare surviving snapshot of what a Lanarkshire mining row actually offered by way of shelter.
South Lanarkshire uncertain (mining district from 1857)–1920s (underground); opencast later Coal
Bannockburn Colliery
A pit that grew a farming hamlet into a 3,000-strong mining community within thirty years, and left behind an award-winning colliery silver band.
Stirling 1894–1953 (drift mine to 1963) Coal
Bardykes Colliery
Sunk on the site of a former infectious disease hospital, the colliery was known locally as the 'Spittal Colliery' for that reason.
South Lanarkshire 1874–1962 Coal
Barnack Quarries
One of Britain's more unlikely nature reserves — its wildflower-carpeted hummocks are entirely the spoil of a medieval quarry that built two cathedrals, before Peterborough Abbey's monks eventually sold off nearly everything worth digging.
Cambridgeshire Roman period, worked intensively from the medieval period–c. 1500 (stone exhausted) Limestone
Barnburgh Main Colliery
Eighteen men were trapped when the floor itself rose up toward the roof in 1942 — four died, and it took six days to recover the last two bodies.
South Yorkshire Sinking started 1911; Barnsley seam reached 1914–16 June 1989 Coal
Baron's Quay Mine
One of four abandoned Northwich rock salt mines covered by a 2004-2007 stabilisation programme.
Cheshire to 19th century Salt
Barony Colliery
Only two headgears of this exact steel-frame design were ever built in Britain — and this is the only one still standing
East Ayrshire Sunk from 1907; coal reached 1912–1989 Coal
Barrington Chalk Pit
The cement works here grew out of one of the era's most notorious banking frauds — Farrow's Bank inflated its unfinished, barely-funded Dreadnought Cement venture to a paper value of £780,000 before the bank collapsed in 1920.
Cambridgeshire Site acquired 1914; first kiln in production July 1927–10 November 2008 Chalk
Beaufort Iron Works
The village of Beaufort is called Cendl in Welsh — a Welsh spelling of Kendall, the name of the brothers who built the ironworks it grew around
Blaenau Gwent 1779–Between 1873 and 1877 Iron, Coal, Limestone
Beauport Park Roman Iron Mine
A slag heap of over 100,000 tons found here in 1862, alongside a remarkably preserved Roman bath house later excavated by Time Team, marks what is thought to have been the third-largest ironworks in the entire Roman Empire.
East Sussex 1st century AD–3rd century AD Iron
Beckermet Mine
Beckermet's own closure in 1980 wasn't quite the end of Cumbrian haematite mining — that distinction belongs to the Florence Mine it had absorbed, which reopened independently afterwards and went on to become the last haematite mine working anywhere in Europe.
Cumbria opened 1903 (iron working in the district since the 12th century)–3 October 1980 (combined with Florence Mine from 1969) Iron
Beckwith Mine
Its early riches were discovered by chance, when lead ore was found lodged in the spokes of a passing cart wheel -- a find so productive that it funded the founding of the Manx Northern Railway, built specifically to carry the mine's ore to Ramsey for shipping.
Isle of Man 1831–c. 1866 Lead
Bedford United Mine
Bedford United's five original setts — Wheal Marquis, Wheal Tavistock, Delves Kitchen, Ding Dong and South Bedford — were each too small to be worth working alone, but combined into a mine substantial enough to become Devon's third-biggest copper producer.
Devon 1841–1890 (main working); arsenic to 1920s Copper, Tin, Arsenic, Tungsten
Bedlay Colliery
The purpose-built mining village of Annathill grew up entirely around this one colliery, its three Miners' Rows, shops, butcher and pub all raised alongside the pit itself in 1905.
North Lanarkshire 1905–1981 Coal
Bedlington 'D' Colliery
A Bedlington colliery run successively by the Bedlington Coal Co. and the NCB until 1968.
Northumberland 1855–1968 Coal
Beer Quarry Caves
Britain's oldest continuously worked industrial site, mined by the Romans for prized building stone
Devon 1st century AD–1920s Freestone
Beldi Hill Mine
A dispute over who actually owned the lead beneath Beldi Hill ran for over three decades and was only settled after an appeal to the House of Lords.
Yorkshire early 1700s–1883 Lead
Benallt Mine
Requisitioned in 1941 because German submarines had cut off the manganese imports British steelmaking depended on
Gwynedd 1886–December 1945 Manganese
Bentley Colliery
The rescue of injured miners after the 1931 explosion, which involved carrying casualties two miles underground to the shaft, brought eight Edward Medals — an unusually high number for a single disaster.
South Yorkshire Proving borehole 1895; sinking from 1904-06; coaling from 1908–December 1993 Coal
Bentyfield Mine
Worked jointly by the London Lead Company and the Alston Moor Mining Company, and linked by tramway to the neighbouring Whitesike mine -- together protected as a single Scheduled Monument.
Cumbria 19th century–uncertain (declining by 1882) Lead
Bere Alston Silver-Lead Mines
Royal silver mines on the Tamar, so productive that in 1296 they supplied 15% of all silver reaching the London mint
Devon 1292–mid-16th century Silver, Lead
Bersham Colliery
One of North Wales's last two working collieries alongside Point of Ayr; survived two fatal 19th/20th-century explosions
Wrexham 1864 (sinking, as Glan-yr-afon); 1874 (main coal production)–1986 Coal
Betteshanger Colliery
The biggest of Kent's four collieries and the last pit in England's most militant coalfield to close
Kent 1924 (sinking); 1927 (first coal)–1989 Coal
Betws Colliery
Betws' 1994 management buyout, which kept the pit working for a further nine years after British Coal gave up on it, echoes the story of worker ownership that saved Tower Colliery in the same era — proof that a mine written off as uneconomic by its nationalised owner could still find a viable second life under different management.
Carmarthenshire development from 1974–June 2003 Coal
Bevercotes Colliery
Built to be worked by one man at a console instead of a team underground — and defeated within a few metres by roof conditions no automation could read
Nottinghamshire Sunk from the late 1950s; production from July 1965–7 May 1993 Coal
Bickershaw Colliery
A Victoria Cross holder, decorated for running a message through sustained machine-gun fire in 1918, died at Bickershaw in 1940 in the most ordinary of mining accidents — carbon monoxide poisoning, no different from what killed men here with no medals at all.
Greater Manchester First shaft sunk c.1830; Nos. 1 and 2 shafts from 1872; deepened 1877–13 March 1992 Coal
Big Pit
Now Wales's National Coal Museum, with underground tours led by former miners
Torfaen 1880–1980 Coal, Iron
Bigrigg Mine
Its documented history reaches back to the mid-12th century, when the mine known as 'Acknirby', just south of the village, was willed to a Cistercian monastery -- possibly the earliest documented iron mine anywhere in West Cumbria.
Cumbria medieval–1932 Iron
Billingham Anhydrite Mine
Thirty-three million tons taken out to make fertiliser — and then sealed and abandoned when the works switched to natural gas
Stockton-on-Tees Shaft sunk from September 1926; production from November 1927–Production ceased 1971; shaft capped 1978 Anhydrite
Bilsthorpe Colliery
Struck by three separate multiple-fatality disasters across seven decades -- a shaft-sinking piping collapse in 1927, twin firedamp explosions in 1934, and a roof collapse in 1993 -- with 77 deaths recorded at the pit in total across its working life.
Nottinghamshire Sinking began in July 1925 under the Stanton Ironworks Co. Ltd–Closed in 1997. Coal
Bilston Glen Colliery
A pit built in the 1950s for a century of coal, closed thirty-seven years later with its memorial the most solid thing left.
Midlothian Sunk from 1952; production from 1963–1989 Coal
Bincliff Lead Mines
Owned throughout by the Duke of Devonshire, the same landowner behind the neighbouring Ecton copper mines already documented on this archive -- men were regularly transferred between the two workings as trade in each rose and fell.
Staffordshire 17th century–1885 Lead
Birkdale Common Mine
Sits in Birkdale, the westernmost of the small side-dales -- alongside Great Sleddale, Little Sleddale and Whitsundale -- whose becks join near Keld to form the River Swale itself.
Yorkshire uncertain–uncertain (district closed by 1912) Lead
Blackcraig Lead Mines
Discovered by a soldier building a military road, worked in three separate bursts a century apart
Dumfries and Galloway 1763–1917 Lead, Zinc
Blackdene Mine
A Weardale lead and fluorspar mine worked since at least the fifteenth century, prized today by collectors for its fine purple fluorite.
County Durham worked by the early 15th century; fluorspar mining from early 20th century–1987 Fluorspar, Lead
Blackhall Colliery
The beach that made Blackhall famous on screen was, in reality, an industrial waste tip — the film shows it exactly as the colliery's own conveyor had left it.
County Durham Sunk from 1909; coal drawing began 1914–16 April 1981 Coal
Blackmoor Rake
One of the open lead workings, alongside neighbouring Ubley Rake, that gave Charterhouse's Victorian lead-slag operation its name -- over 100 metres long and up to 10 metres deep, still clearly visible in the landscape today.
Somerset Roman; 1844 (industrial phase)–1885 Lead
Blaen y Cwm Quarry
A Blaenau Ffestiniog slate quarry served by the Rhiwbach Tramway to the Ffestiniog Railway.
Gwynedd trial workings c. 1818–8 May 1914 Slate
Blaenant Colliery
A Crynant drift mine that became the last colliery working in the Neath valley before its 1990 closure.
Neath Port Talbot 1930–1990 Coal
Blaenavon Ironworks
A pioneering Welsh ironworks, the first anywhere to use a steam-powered blowing engine in 1789, now a museum at the heart of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Torfaen 1788-89 (leased 1788, furnaces blown in 1789)–Iron production ceased 1904 Iron, Coal
Blaenserchan Colliery
This colliery kept producing coal for sixteen years after it stopped winding anything to its own surface, its output instead routed entirely underground through a neighbouring pit.
Torfaen Sunk 1890–28 August 1985 Coal
Blaenycae Quarry
Slate was lifted from the pit first by chain incline and later by a Blondin ropeway -- a cableway system named after Charles Blondin, the tightrope walker who crossed the Niagara gorge in 1859, and adapted for the Nantlle Valley's own quarrying needs.
Gwynedd Operations commenced around 1830.–Closed during the 1930s Slate
Blagill Mine
Blagill has the unusual distinction of being the only place in the world where barytocalcite -- a mineral most collections only ever see a specimen of -- was ever mined as a commercial ore in its own right.
Cumbria 1859–1895 Lead, Barytocalcite
Blakethwaite Mine
Blakethwaite transferred its smelting operations to Surrender Mill in 1878 — the same Surrender Mill already recorded on this site, meaning two of Swaledale's best-known smelt-mill ruins were, for a few years at least, run as parts of the very same company's operation.
North Yorkshire 1819 (mine); 1821 (smelt mill)–1878 Lead
Blantyre Colliery
The site of Scotland's worst-ever mining disaster: an 1877 explosion that killed 207 men and boys, followed by two further fatal explosions and accidents at the same colliery group over the next two years (see Disasters, below).
South Lanarkshire 19th century–1957 Coal
Blidworth Colliery
A £2 million post-war reorganisation, completed under the National Coal Board, raised its output from the Top Hard seam to nearly 650,000 tons a year from a workforce of 1,200.
Nottinghamshire Sunk 1924-26 by the Newstead Colliery Co. Ltd.–Closed on 1 March 1989. Coal
Blists Hill Colliery
Its own blast furnaces, brick and tile works, and mines were consolidated by the Madeley Wood Company into a single integrated ironmaking site, now preserved whole as the Blists Hill Victorian Town open-air museum.
Shropshire Coal, ironstone and fireclay were worked here from the 1770s.–Closed in 1941. Coal, Iron, Fireclay
Blue John Cavern
Blue John is so rare that only about fifteen veins of it are known to have ever existed anywhere on Earth — and eight of them are inside this one cavern.
Derbyshire from Documented from at least 1766; possibly worked earlier Fluorspar
Bog Mine
The Somme Tunnel takes its name not from any accident underground but from the war raging in France at the time it was dug — driven in 1917 purely to give unemployed miners paid work, a home-front answer to a battle its own workforce could hear about only from the newspapers.
Shropshire 1730s–1924 Lead, Zinc, Barite
Bogside Colliery
Bogside's own miners set national production records in the 1960s — a pit at the very top of its game, undone two decades later not by exhausted coal but by flood damage sustained in one of Britain's most bitter industrial disputes.
Fife opened 1957-59 (sources differ on the exact year)–1985-86 (sources differ on the exact year) Coal
Bold Colliery
Bold outlasted the 1984-85 strike itself, only for the National Coal Board to close it anyway seven months later — a pit that had survived floods, a fatal shaft accident and 110 years of continuous working, brought down by a balance sheet rather than the ground beneath it.
Merseyside 1875–1985 Coal
Bomarsund Colliery
Named for a Crimean War naval victory the same year it was sunk, the pit gave its name to a village whose 1922 War Memorial Hall and former brewery still outlast the colliery itself by decades.
Northumberland 1905–1965 Coal
Bonawe Iron Furnace
The longest-lived charcoal-fired blast furnace in Scotland and now the most complete surviving charcoal ironworks in Britain.
Argyll and Bute 1753–1874-76 Iron
Bonsall Leys Mines
A scheduled monument whose ten parallel lead rakes are thought to be nationally unparalleled in their complexity -- Bonsall Leys packs more intensive small-scale post-medieval lead working into one site than almost anywhere else in the country.
Derbyshire 1540s–19th century (lead); later fluorspar recovery Lead, Barite, Fluorspar
Booze Mine
A local legend held that eighteenth-century miners once broke into an underground lake here and drowned 24 men and two pit ponies -- researchers have found no record of any such event in the parish registers, though a smaller, unconfirmed accident involving three deaths may be the story's real origin.
Yorkshire 1872–late 19th century (lead); 1914 (slate) Lead, Slate
Boswedden Mine
Powered by what was reputedly the second-largest waterwheel in Britain, some 65 feet in diameter -- large enough that it was said to be the biggest in Cornwall.
Cornwall 1808–1876 Tin, Copper
Botallack Mine
Clifftop engine houses with workings extending under the sea
Cornwall 1500s–1895 Tin, Lead, Cobalt, Copper, Arsenic, Silver
Bothwell Castle Colliery
The government itself took direct control of this colliery in 1943, unsatisfied with its wartime output — a rare instance of the state stepping directly into day-to-day management rather than just regulating from outside.
South Lanarkshire Nos. 3 and 4 shafts sunk 1889–1959 (upper coal working ended; retained afterward as a pumping station) Coal
Boulby Alum Quarries
Fed by barrels of urine shipped from London, because the process needed ammonia and there was no cheaper source in the country
North Yorkshire 1650s–1871 Alum
Boulby Mine
Britain's deepest mine at 1.1km down; also hosts the UK's only deep underground physics laboratory
North Yorkshire from 1970s Potash, Salt
Bowhill Colliery
Known locally as 'the Josephine' after the chairman's daughter who opened it in 1895 — a name that outlived the coal company itself by seventy years.
Fife 1895 (coal); earlier ironstone working–May 1965 Coal, Iron
Bowithick Quarry
A small Cornish slate quarry worked in tandem with its neighbour, sharing one beam engine between the two.
Cornwall By 1870–c. 1913 Slate