All Profit Colliery

Overview

A small Forest of Dean gale on Nofold Green near Cinderford, granted to Thomas Brain of Hawthorns on 30 August 1842 to work the Coleford High Delf and Brazilly veins, and to be called All Profit Colliery. The grant fixes its position the way Forest gales were fixed — about a hundred yards north-west of the Old Engine Bridge and about twenty yards west of the turnpike road. An indenture of August 1846 brought in John Winnall and William and John Stallard on part of the gale, and Brain raised 370 tons that year. The official 1880 list of collieries at work returns it under J. A. Brain, so the family still held it forty years on. This is a deliberately short record: the surviving documentary trail for the colliery is thin, and rather than pad it out the entry says what is actually known.

History

The gale was granted on 30 August 1842 to Thomas Brain of Hawthorns, to get coal in the Coleford High Delf and Brazilly veins on Nofold Green, about a hundred yards north-west of the Old Engine Bridge and about twenty yards west of the turnpike road, and to be called All Profit Colliery. The name is the free miners’ own, and of a piece with the rest of the Forest: Aimwell, Never Fear, No Luck At All and Arthur’s Folly are all real gales of the same coalfield and the same period. An indenture of 7 August 1846 records Thomas Brain and Mary Ann his wife, John Winnall, and William and John Stallard holding part of All Profit between them. Output that year was 370 tons under Thomas Brain — a figure of the same order as the neighbouring free-miner gales, which raised a few hundred tons a year each and sold by country sale. The official list of collieries at work in 1880 returns the pit as "All Profit, Cinderford, J. A. Brain", so the family was still working it nearly four decades later. Beyond that the record is largely silent, and this entry does not pretend otherwise. The ground the gale lay on was subject to opencast extraction in the 1960s and 1970s, which will have removed most of what was left of it.

Geology

The Coleford High Delf Seam of the Pennant Group and the Brazilly Seam of the Supra-Pennant above it — the two seams named in the grant, and the pair that most of the small Cinderford and Coleford gales worked. Both outcrop on the western and northern sides of the Forest of Dean basin and were within reach of a level or a shallow shaft, which is what made a free-miner gale of a few hundred tons a year possible at all.

Workings

Not recorded in detail. The grant defines the working area rather than the works, in the Forest manner — a position relative to a bridge and a road, and the two veins that could be taken from it. Gales of this size in the 1840s were worked by level or shallow shaft, wound by horse whim where they were wound at all, and sold their coal locally.

Closure

No closing date has been established. The colliery is returned as at work in 1880 under J. A. Brain and nothing found records when it stopped. The ground was subject to opencast extraction in the 1960s and 1970s.

What remains

Nothing has been identified on the ground. The Nofold area was opencasted in the 1960s and 1970s, which will have taken away most surviving traces of the small gales worked there.

Nothing specific to the colliery has been identified.

Nearby mines

• Northern United Colliery — 1.1 km S
• Addis Hill Colliery — 1.2 km NE
• Foxes Bridge Colliery — 2.1 km S
• Trafalgar Colliery — 2.8 km SE, Forest of Dean
• Lightmoor Colliery — 3.2 km E, Forest of Dean

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The official list of collieries at work in 1880 returns the pit as "All Profit, Cinderford, J. A. Brain". ¹
• The gale was granted on 30 August 1842 to Thomas Brain of Hawthorns, to get coal in the Coleford High Delf and Brazilly veins on Nofold Green, about 100 yards north-west of the Old Engine Bridge and about 20 yards west of the turnpike road, and to be called All Profit Colliery. ²
• An indenture of 7 August 1846 records Thomas Brain and Mary Ann his wife, John Winnall, William Stallard and John Stallard holding part of All Profit; output that year was 370 tons under Thomas Brain. ²
• The area that included the Nofold workings was subject to open-cast extraction in the 1960s and 1970s. ³
• Free mining in the Forest of Dean allowed a person born in the Hundred of St Briavels who had worked a year and a day in a local mine to take a gale — a licensed claim — for coal, iron ore, ochre or stone, which is the tenure All Profit was held under. ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) List of coal mines UK 1880 — Coalmining History Resource Centre
2. (secondary) All Profit — Forest of Dean Coal Mining — Lightmoor Press
3. (secondary) Forest of Dean coal mines — index of named collieries — torrens.org
4. (secondary) A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5, Bledisloe Hundred, St Briavels Hundred, the Forest of Dean — Industry — Victoria County History / British History Online

Record created: 6 September 2026 · Last researched: 6 September 2026