Mines

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The 100 mines most recently added, of 2515, newest first.

MineRegionWorkedCommodities
Callendar Colliery
An estate colliery that was half a brickworks, digging fireclay and blaes alongside its coal for a century.
Falkirk By 1855 (estate workings from 1830)–November 1959 (Policy Pit) Coal, Fireclay, Ironstone
Warrix Colliery
Sunk in the middle of a strike, its first coal carted off and sold while pickets tried to stop the work.
North Ayrshire 1894–November 1950 Coal, Fireclay
Oxenford Colliery
One of the last Ormiston pits, given a new shaft by the Coal Board in 1949 and worked for another decade.
East Lothian 1854–January 1959 (some accounts 1962) Coal
Hillhouserigg Colliery
A Shotts Iron Company pit worked for a century, from the ironworks' early years to the first years of the Coal Board.
North Lanarkshire 1850–April 1949 Coal, Ironstone
Rankinston Colliery
An ironmasters' pit sunk two hundred metres to a two-foot band of ironstone, whose bing still stands over Rankinston.
East Ayrshire By 1880–1913 (ironstone workings abandoned) Coal, Ironstone
Barbauchlaw Colliery
An Armadale mine that raised steam coal and fireclay, with a brickworks alongside.
West Lothian 1900 (earlier pits by 1856)–February 1952 (abandoned 1953) Coal, Fireclay
Wellsgreen Colliery
A Fife Coal Company pit in the Dysart Main, the thickest seam in Fife, now under a golf driving range.
Fife 1884-1890 (sinking)–April 1959 Coal
Ferniegair Colliery
A Hamilton pit where an electric coal-cutter's cable fired gas in 1909 and the widows took the owners to court.
South Lanarkshire c. 1850–February 1947 Coal
Canderrigg Colliery
Stonehouse's biggest employer after the looms fell silent, cutting coal by machine in seams eighteen inches high.
South Lanarkshire By 1905–January 1954 (some accounts 1958) Coal
Thankerton Colliery
Holytown's big pit, worked for over a century and employing more than 700 when it was nationalised.
North Lanarkshire 1850–December 1953 (abandoned 1954) Coal
Southfield Colliery
The Shotts Iron Company's big inter-war colliery at Shotts, with over 500 men at nationalisation.
North Lanarkshire 1920 (sinking)–May 1959 Coal
Dullatur Colliery
A 1930s anthracite drift mine near Cumbernauld whose brick pithead buildings still stand.
North Lanarkshire 1935 (earlier workings by 1899)–May 1964 Coal
Coalburn Colliery, New Cumnock
A New Cumnock pit first leased by the manager of the Marquis of Bute's pottery, worked on a small scale for over a century.
East Ayrshire 1854 (present mine 1924)–February 1962 Coal
Broomside Colliery
A shallow Motherwell pit where waste was being stowed hydraulically as early as 1911.
North Lanarkshire 1869–October 1948 (abandoned 1950) Coal
Ardenrigg Colliery
An anthracite pit on the moor above Plains whose coal rode an aerial ropeway down to the brickworks at Stepends.
North Lanarkshire 1908–June 1963 Coal
Hassockrigg Colliery
A Coltness Iron Company pit between Shotts and Harthill, worked from the 1870s until 1962.
North Lanarkshire By 1876–1962 Coal
Pirnhall Colliery
A Carron Company drift mine on the edge of Stirling, worked in tandem with Bannockburn Colliery.
Stirling 1933 (earlier workings by 1867)–1963 Coal
Shieldmains Colliery
An Ayrshire colliery of fourteen numbered pits and mines, the last of them worked until 1950.
East Ayrshire By 1900–March 1950 Coal
Craigrie Colliery
A Clackmannan pit sketched by Lord Eldin about 1770, still winding coal for the Alloa Coal Company in 1952.
Clackmannanshire 1852 (reopened 1942)–August 1952 (abandoned 1957) Coal
Littlemill Colliery
Rankinston's pit, rebuilt in the 1950s with a 325-metre shaft, whose closure in 1974 emptied the village.
East Ayrshire 1860 (some accounts 1905)–June 1974 Coal
Fortissat Colliery
A Shotts moorland pit worked for coal and ironstone, remembered now by the remains of Scobie's Bing.
North Lanarkshire By 1875–1949 Coal
Tillicoultry Colliery
The Clackmannanshire drift mine that gave television its first live broadcast from underground, in 1952.
Clackmannanshire 1866 (first listed)–18 January 1957 (abandoned 1959) Coal
Woodmuir Colliery
West Lothian's 'Blinky', whose tall brick washery still stands among the fields at Breich.
West Lothian By 1859–1963 Coal
Carriden Colliery
A Bo'ness colliery sunk at the start of the First World War in a parish mined since the thirteenth century.
Falkirk By 1905–January 1953 (abandoned 1954) Coal
Polquhairn Colliery
An Ayrshire house-coal pit that found a second life beyond a whin dyke and lasted until 1962.
East Ayrshire 1895–August 1962 Coal
Capledrae Colliery
A Fife cannel-coal colliery deliberately drowned with a diverted burn to put out a fire in 1888.
Fife By 1837–1889 Coal
Muirbeath Colliery
The last pits sunk in Dunfermline's own burgh coalfield at Highholm, worked for twenty years.
Fife 1894 (sinking from 1892)–1914 Coal
Preston Island Colliery
A baronet's island colliery in the Firth of Forth, built to fire salt pans and ended by an explosion within a decade.
Fife By 1807 (sinking from c. 1800)–1811 Coal
Little Raith Colliery
A Cowdenbeath colliery that probably lent its name to an early Raith Rovers, a forerunner of Cowdenbeath F.C.
Fife By 1852–1959 Coal
Grangemouth Colliery
A Forth-side colliery whose clay won honours at the Great Exhibition and whose subsidence made rare saline lagoons.
Falkirk 1839–1911–1912 Coal
Lanemark Colliery
The New Cumnock colliery that housed its miners in the South Boig rows and lent its name to a football club.
East Ayrshire 1865–1908 Coal
Gilbertfield Colliery
Cambuslang's 'slaughter house' pit, whose miners pulled their way to a national tug-of-war title.
South Lanarkshire 1880 (sinking)–1919 Coal
Banknock Colliery
A Stirlingshire colliery whose spoil heaps outlived it by fifty years as a brickworks' raw material.
Falkirk By 1869–c. 1931 Coal
Gilmerton Colliery
Three centuries of edge-coal mining on Edinburgh's doorstep, ended by a fire that sealed the pit for good.
Midlothian 1627 (first record)–1961 (abandoned 1963) Coal
Arniston Colliery
Gorebridge's colliery, whose Emily shaft was said to be the deepest in Scotland when it was sunk.
Midlothian 1858 (some accounts 1860s)–April 1962 Coal
Clara Vale Colliery
A pit village named after the coal owner's wife, built with the colliery in 1893 and still standing apart.
Tyne and Wear 1893 (sinking from 1891)–1966 Coal
Randolph Colliery, Evenwood
Evenwood's big pit, whose coke and gas works outlived it by twenty-two years.
County Durham 1893–1962 Coal
Midgeholme Colliery
A Pennine-edge coalfield worked for over three hundred years, whose coal once rode behind Stephenson's Rocket.
Cumbria 1628 (first record)–1954 Coal
Howden Colliery
A North Bitchburn company pit that worked every one of its parent colliery's seams except the Brockwell.
County Durham 1860s (first record)–1907 Coal
East Walbottle Colliery
A small Edwardian pit that lasted into the 1960s and kept its pithead baths.
Tyne and Wear 1908–1966 Coal
East Howle Colliery
A colliery lit, signalled and pumped by electricity in 1894 that worked out its coal within thirty-three years.
County Durham 1872–1905 Coal
Hutton Henry Colliery
A twenty-one-year colliery that took a village from 156 people to over 3,000 and then stopped paying.
County Durham 1876–1897 Coal
Shincliffe Colliery
A colliery won amid celebration in 1839 whose village, emptied by its closure, lost even its name.
County Durham 1839 (sinking from 1837)–1875 (abandoned 1886) Coal
Spital Tongues Colliery
The colliery that tunnelled under a city to reach its river, then failed within twenty years.
Tyne and Wear 1835 (sinking from 1833)–1858 (some accounts 1860) Coal
Prestwick Colliery
A Ponteland pit worked on and off from 1771 to 1966 that never employed two hundred men.
Northumberland 1771–1966 Coal
Brusselton Colliery
A small south-west Durham pit that the Coal Board tripled in size in the 1950s.
County Durham 1834–1968 Coal
Dunston Colliery
A Bowes pit that worked for a year, lay idle for fifteen, then ran for over half a century.
Tyne and Wear 1875 (first sunk 1873)–1947 Coal
Rough Lea Colliery
The largest of Hunwick's pits, whose fireclay pipe works outlived it by forty years.
County Durham 1858–1931 Coal
North Bitchburn Colliery
A Stobart colliery with its own pipe works that employed nearly a thousand in 1902 and is now a wood.
County Durham 1845–1966 Coal
Woodhouse Close Colliery
A colliery won in 1837 that ended as a 28-foot drift, its pit heaps levelled for a post-war housing estate.
County Durham 1835–1934 Coal
Sunniside Colliery
A hilltop Pease pit whose village of 1,500 emptied towards the coast after 1925.
County Durham 1867–1925 (reopened 1937-1965) Coal
West Sleekburn Colliery
A modest Bedlington pit that employed nearly a thousand in the 1920s, now marked only by a vent pipe.
Northumberland 1859–1962 Coal
Delves Colliery
A Consett Iron Company pit first worked by Mormons, which named it the Latter Day Saints pit.
County Durham 1847–1963 (Saints Pit closed 1913) Coal
Tyne Main Colliery
Its Friar's Goose engine house, the last pumping station built to keep the Tyne out of the lower river's collieries, still stands.
Tyne and Wear 1798–1926 Coal
Stobswood Colliery
A Northumberland pit that stayed small for forty years, then quadrupled and broke production records in the 1940s.
Northumberland 1875–1965 Coal
Toronto Colliery
A Wear-side colliery named after Toronto, whose village kept the Canadian name.
County Durham 1859 (sinking from 1857)–1967 (last plans 1976) Coal
Eldon Colliery
A Pease colliery of 1829 that employed nearly 2,000 at its 1921 peak and was pulled down within two years of closing.
County Durham 1829–1932 Coal
Byers Green Colliery
A Bolckow, Vaughan coking colliery that passed through six owners in ninety years.
County Durham 1841 (sinking from 1840)–1931 Coal
Croxdale Colliery
A Weardale company colliery whose village streets still carry the names of the men who paid for its houses.
County Durham 1875 (Thornton Pit sunk 1876)–1934 Coal
Aberfoyle Slate Quarries
Scotland's 'tartan slate' quarries, which outlasted most of the country's slate industry and reopened after the Second World War.
Stirling 1625 (first record)–1954 (some accounts 1958) Slate
Glenochil Colliery
A 1950s Coal Board mine planned for fifty years that closed after six, its site now a prison.
Clackmannanshire 1952–1962 Coal
Westfield Opencast
Britain's largest and longest-lived opencast coal mine, which left Europe's largest bituminous-coal pit lake.
Fife 1955–1998 (final extraction from 2008) Coal
Redmire Quarry
A Dales quarry that fed Teesside's ironworks for eighty years by aerial ropeway and the Wensleydale line.
North Yorkshire Before 1912–1992 Limestone
Hazard Colliery
The bigger of the two North Hetton pits, whose workforce doubled in the six years after it was joined with Moorsley in 1915.
Tyne and Wear 1818–1935 Coal
Plump Hill Dolomite Quarry
A Forest of Dean lime and road-stone quarry where orchids now grow on the floor.
Forest of Dean Late 1800s–Early 1900s Limestone
Wensley Quarry
A Wensleydale quarry that once sent limestone by train to the Teesside steelworks.
North Yorkshire 1947–Still active Limestone
Laffack Colliery
A St Helens colliery of the 1760s whose 1850s records read as a roll of explosions, falls and overwinds.
Merseyside 1769 (first record)–After 1875 Coal
North Hetton Colliery
A Moorsley pit of 1821 with its own brickworks and school, closed with its sister the Hazard in 1935.
Tyne and Wear 1821 (sinking also dated 1826)–1935 Coal
Westbury Brook Ironstone Mine
A Forest of Dean mine sunk to feed the Dowlais ironworks, which produced nearly a million tons of ore.
Forest of Dean Late 1830s–1893 Iron
Ty'n-y-bryn Quarry
A Dolwyddelan slate quarry with a rare standard-gauge incline running straight to its mill.
Conwy 1840s–1914 (Penllyn via its mill to 1924) Slate
King Barrow Quarry
Victorian Portland quarries where the quarrymen dug into Roman burials and beehive chambers.
Dorset 1800s–c. 1900 Limestone
Yeolands Quarry
One of Portland's deepest quarries, once earmarked for an Eden Project-style Jurassic park.
Dorset to 2000s (largely redundant) Limestone
Perryfield Quarry
Portland Stone Firms' main quarry, whose Whitbed went into Westminster Abbey and Waterloo Bridge.
Dorset 1890s–Still active Limestone
Cambrian Quarry
Glyn Ceiriog's big slate quarry, with a tunnel railway and a chairman who paid its wages himself.
Wrexham 1857 (company–15 March 1947 Slate
Tytherington Quarry
A railway-age limestone quarry near Thornbury, still sending stone out by train.
South Gloucestershire 1872–Still active Limestone
Fairy Cave Quarry
A Mendip quarry that broke into some 4.5 kilometres of cave passage before planning ran out.
Somerset 1920s–1977 Limestone
Ribblehead Quarry
A Settle-Carlisle railway quarry that later sent ballast down the line and is now left to rewild.
North Yorkshire Late 1800s–1998 Limestone
Broadcroft Quarry
A working Portland stone quarry with a butterfly reserve on its own infilled ground.
Dorset 1900s (merged family quarries)–Still active Limestone
Tout Quarry
A Portland stone quarry worked for two centuries and turned into a sculpture park in 1983.
Dorset c. 1780–1982 Limestone
Jordans Mine
The mine that moved Portland stone working underground, beneath a cricket ground, schools and roads.
Dorset 2008 (mine–Still active Limestone
Wigpool Ironstone Mine
One of the Forest of Dean's big iron-ore mines, now a winter roost for rare horseshoe bats.
Forest of Dean By 1856–1924 (principal mine 1918) Iron
Wynne Quarry
A Ceiriog valley slate mine that served as a wartime store, a water supply and a show cave.
Wrexham c. 1770–1928 (Coflein gives 1920) Slate
Cedryn Quarry
A remote Snowdonia slate quarry with its own five-mile tramway, given up because its slate was poor.
Conwy 1827 (first record)–c. 1880 (company dissolved 1885) Slate
Chwarel Ddu Quarry
The Lledr Valley's first slate quarry, whose 1810 cart road is now part of the A470.
Conwy c. 1800–c. 1929 (after a 1920s revival) Slate
Westleigh Colliery
A Leigh pit where, in 1896, an engine started the wrong way and a cage of eight fell 370 yards.
Greater Manchester from By 1862 Coal
Kirkless Hall Colliery
John Lancaster's 1845 colliery, the seed of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company, where thirteen died in 1847.
Greater Manchester from 1845 Coal
Shipley Colliery
The Miller Mundy estate collieries, with their own canal, whose Woodside pit is remembered by a scaled-down headstock.
Derbyshire By the mid-18th century–1960s Coal
Victoria Colliery, Stanley
The 'Deep Drop' at Stanley, one of the deepest pits of its district, where twenty-one died in 1879.
West Yorkshire 1840 (Silkstone Pit)–1922 Coal
Sutton Colliery
The 'Bread and Herring Pit' of Sutton-in-Ashfield, now a forest park where carved miners remember the five dead of 1957.
Nottinghamshire 1874–25 August 1989 Coal
Bycars Colliery
A Burslem colliery of the potters Enoch Wood and James Caldwell, where six died in 1859.
Staffordshire By 1816–1915 Coal, Ironstone
Newmarket Colliery
A Calder-side pit at work by 1775 and still working in 1983, one of the oldest in the country.
West Yorkshire By 1775 (sunk anew 1837)–1983 Coal
Gerards Bridge Colliery
An early St Helens pit by the canal where a father and four sons died together in the 1847 explosion.
Merseyside By 1805–1870s (last listed 1873) Coal
Douglas Bank Colliery
A Wigan-coalfield pit sunk 737 yards, where shaft sinking twice killed five men, in 1865 and 1888.
Greater Manchester 1863–December 1920 Coal
Heworth Colliery
A Gateshead pit of 1710 and 1821, its old shaft still capped in a field, that employed 2,000 before closing in 1963.
Tyne and Wear 1821 (High Heworth from 1710)–29 June 1963 Coal
Pudley Hill Colliery
A Botfield pit of 1829 that became east Telford's shared mine-drainage station, its beam engine blown up in 1971.
Shropshire 1829–By 1914 Coal, Ironstone
Stafford Colliery, Priorslee
A Priorslee pit that took in Dark Lane's survivors up a 180-foot chain ladder after the 1884 explosion.
Shropshire By 1884–After 1915 Coal, Ironstone
Lawn Colliery
The deepest pit in the Shropshire coalfield in 1841, whose pumped water later fed the Priorslee furnaces.
Shropshire c.1820–1906 Coal
Kells Pit, Whitehaven
The Whitehaven pit whose 1790s Heslop winding engine, the last of its kind, is in the Science Museum.
Cumbria from By 1781 Coal
Rounds Green New Pit
Oldbury's worst pit disaster, nineteen dead in 1846, which reached Parliament and a famous Black Country poster.
West Midlands By 1846–1919 Coal
Mesne Lea Colliery
A Worsley pit thought free of gas, where in 1867 a man went in with a candle before the fireman's round and seven died.
Greater Manchester from 1824 Coal

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