All mines

Operating

Mines 1–100 of 600, A–Z (page 1 of 6).

MineRegionWorkedCommodities
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; organised commercial quarrying from around 1810–2003 Slate
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; candleworks c.1923; crude oil works continued to c.1956 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
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; No.3 and No.4 sunk 1894-1900; No.5 sunk late 1950s–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 quarrying for curling stones from the 1850s; large-scale roadstone quarrying from 1907–roadstone quarry unprofitable and short-lived; curling-stone quarrying continues on an occasional basis today 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
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 Alum attempted from 1561; sand and pyrite worked from the 16th century–Extraction now prohibited under SSSI designation 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 Coal worked in the district before the 16th century; the modern colliery opened 29 May 1946–Ceased production 26 March 1967 Coal
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; reopened 1843 and again in the 1850s–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
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
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 Copper working documented from the medieval period (radiocarbon dated to c.1420-1530); worked intermittently thereafter–1885 (final closure under the North Devon Mining Co) Copper, Iron, Manganese
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
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
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
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
Beer Quarry Caves
Britain's oldest continuously worked industrial site, mined by the Romans for prized building stone
Devon 1st century AD–1920s Freestone
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
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 1292–16th 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; Betws New Drift began production 1978 (predecessor Ammanford Colliery closed 1976)–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
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
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
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
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
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; steel manufacture in the wider works continued until 1938 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
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 (smelting); worked intermittently after Lead
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
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
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
Box Quarry
Brunel's Box Tunnel revealed by accident just how much stone lay beneath the hill it was blasted through — the resulting mine grew into the largest in the country, 600 acres of underground passages centred on a chamber simply known as the Cathedral.
Wiltshire Worked from at least the 17th-18th century; commercial mining expanded rapidly after 1841–1968 Freestone
Bradda Head Mines
Clifftop workings below Milner's Tower, with shafts sunk below sea level
Isle of Man Bronze Age–1904 Copper, Lead, Silver
Braich Goch Quarry
Braich Goch's nearly two-century working life makes it one of the longest-lived slate quarries in Wales — and its underground chambers now draw more visitors as King Arthur's Labyrinth than they ever employed quarrymen at the site's Victorian peak.
Gwynedd 1787–1970 Slate
Bramley Fall Quarry
Supplied the gritstone for Leeds Town Hall and Kirkstall Abbey and was shipped as far as the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge.
West Yorkshire Worked since at least the 12th century–c.1930 Sandstone
Brandelhow Mine
Brandelhow's real claim to fame today has little to do with what came out of the ground: the same fellside where German miners once worked silver and lead for Elizabeth I became, in 1902, the very first piece of land the National Trust ever owned.
Cumbria worked by the 1560s (Elizabethan); reopened on a larger scale in 1819–early 1891 Lead, Copper, Silver, Graphite
Brandon Flint Mines
Worked on and off for 6,000 years; its Napoleonic-era knappers held the sole British Army contract for musket gunflints
Suffolk c. 4000 BC (earliest working); revived post-medieval period–1930s Flint
Brightling and Mountfield Gypsum Mines
A borehole drilled to look for coal found four seams of gypsum instead — and the mine it started is still working 150 years later
East Sussex from 1876 (Mountfield); 1963 (Brightling) Gypsum, Anhydrite
Britannia Copper Mine
Hundreds of thousands of people walk past this mine every year on their way up Snowdon, over a causeway it built.
Gwynedd First recorded around 1800–1916 Copper
Brodsworth Colliery
Once the highest-output three-shaft colliery in Britain, paired with Woodlands, one of the finest early garden villages built for a mining community.
South Yorkshire sunk October 1905 - 1907–7 September 1990 Coal
Brora Colliery
It worked Jurassic coal, not Carboniferous — and after its liquidator shut it in 1960 the twenty-five sacked miners bought it back and ran it as a co-operative
Highland Coal recorded at Brora from 1529; first shaft sunk 1598–1974 Coal
Brownley Hill Mine
Brownley Hill gave science one of its rarer minerals: alstonite, first identified here in the 1830s and named for the wider Alston Moor district the mine itself sits within.
Cumbria worked from the early 1700s–1966 Lead, Silver, Zinc
Broxburn Oil Works
Its spent waste alone built one of the largest artificial hills in Scotland, now a scheduled monument in its own right
West Lothian Small-scale working from the 1860s; the Broxburn Oil Company formed 1877–26 April 1927 Oil Shale
Bryntail Lead Mine
More of its buildings survive intact than at almost any other Welsh metal mine — and it stands directly below a modern reservoir dam
Powys Worked from the late 18th century–1884 Lead, Barite
Burngrange Oil Shale Mine
A relatively new Scottish shale mine
Midlothian 1936–1962 Oil Shale
Burrow Farm Mine
Its engine house was built from another failed mine's stone, to hold a second-hand engine from a third site — and got four years' use before the field closed for good
Somerset 1860 (shaft sunk)–1883 Iron
Bursledon Brickworks
A brickworks kept whole because a motorway cut it in half — the surviving half is the last steam brickworks in the country.
Hampshire 1897–1974 Brick Clay
Bwlch Glas Mine
The dedicated tramway built to serve this mine failed and closed years before Bwlch Glas's own real production began — its mill was later built directly on top of the abandoned trackbed.
Ceredigion 1880s–1923 Lead, Silver, Zinc
Cadeby Main Colliery
Site of a 1912 double explosion that killed 91 men, more than half of them rescuers wiped out searching for the first blast's victims
South Yorkshire 1889–7 November 1986 Coal
Cae Coch Sulphur Mine
A distinctive orange-stained sulphur mine, at one point supplying over half the UK's WWI pyrite output
Conwy 1607–1942 Pyrite
Cambokeels Mine
Cambokeels' incline was built during the First World War by German prisoners of war — a small, easily overlooked detail that ties a routine Pennine fluorspar mine directly into the story of the war being fought at the same time on the other side of Europe.
County Durham 1868 (lead, Beaumont Company); reopened 1905 for fluorspar–1989 Fluorspar, Lead
Cambrian Colliery
Struck by two of the worst colliery explosions in South Wales history twenty years apart, and owned by the combine whose 1910 lockout at a neighbouring pit escalated into the Tonypandy Riots.
Rhondda Cynon Taf No.1 shaft sunk from 1872; No.2 from 1874; No.3 1889-91; No.4 from 1912–24 September 1966 Coal
Cann Quarry
Slate from here paved Piccadilly and tiled Kensington, hauled out first by a purpose-built canal and then a tramway engineered with input from Brunel.
Devon First recorded 1671; likely worked earlier–1915 Slate
Cannop Colliery
Pumped 1,140 million gallons of water out of the ground in a single year — and the cost of doing that eventually closed the pit
Gloucestershire Shafts sunk from 1906; deep coal reached 1909–1960 Coal
Caphouse Colliery
Home to the National Coal Mining Museum for England; its shaft may be the oldest still in everyday use in Britain
West Yorkshire 1770s-1780s–1985 Coal
Carclaze Pit
A French scientist wrote up this pit for the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1764 — a century before anyone realised it was sitting on a fortune in china clay
Cornwall Tin streaming from an unknown early date; china clay from 1851–Clay extraction ceased around 2002 China Clay, Tin
Cardowan Colliery
Over 50 men are recorded as having died at Cardowan across its working life, yet the explosion that most directly hastened its closure — in January 1982 — killed no one at all, injuring 25 severely enough that the colliery was shut down until the cause could be established.
North Lanarkshire Sinking from 1924; production from 1929–1983 Coal
Carmyllie Quarries
To move its stone the quarry owner built the steepest railway in Scotland ever worked by a passenger train — five miles from sea level to 600 feet
Angus Late 18th century–20th century (railway closed 1965) Freestone
Carn Brea Mine
One of the largest and most productive mines of the Camborne-Redruth district before its 1896 amalgamation folded its history into the combined Tincroft story.
Cornwall 1832 (amalgamation of Wheal Fanny, Tregajorran, Barncoose and Wheal Druid)–1913-14 (Carn Brea section); combined Tincroft mine continued to 1921 Copper, Tin, Arsenic, Tungsten
Carn Galver Mine
For all its Victorian investment — seventy miners, a shaft sunk to 130 fathoms, two purpose-built engine houses — Carn Galver's total recorded output across its working life came to just 150 tons of black tin, a genuinely modest return for the scale of effort put into it.
Cornwall worked early 19th century (three main periods: to 1840; 1851-1869; 1871-1875)–1875 Tin
Carnon Mine
A Cornish tin mine worked from cast-iron cylinder shafts sunk into an artificial island in a tidal creek, closed after only six years despite turning a profit.
Cornwall 1824–1830 Tin, Gold
Carrock Fell Mine
The only mine outside Cornwall and Devon to have produced wolfram at scale
Cumbria 1854–1981 Tungsten, Copper, Arsenic, Lead
Castell Carn Dochan Mine
A small Welsh gold mine named for the ruined thirteenth-century castle on the crag above it, the most easterly mine of the Merioneth gold-mining district.
Gwynedd 1862-63–1904 or 1905 Gold, Silver
Castle-an-Dinas Wolfram Mine
One of only two mines in Britain ever worked for tungsten and nothing else, dug straight through the middle of an Iron Age hillfort
Cornwall 1917–1957 Tungsten
Castlecaldwell Feldspar Mine
The feldspar and kaolin dug here directly supplied the founding of Belleek Pottery, still Ireland's best-known ceramics maker.
County Fermanagh Deposits identified 1853; mining developed through the 1850s-60s–1940s (last feldspar working) Feldspar, China Clay