Coalbrookdale Colliery

Overview

The coal and ironstone workings that fed Abraham Darby's Coalbrookdale ironworks -- home of the first successfully sustained coke-fired blast furnace in Europe -- and the site of a fatal explosion in 1856 that killed eleven men and boys.

History

Coal had been worked at Coalbrookdale on a substantial scale since land here passed to John Brooke in 1572, feeding a succession of ironworking ventures; in 1709 Abraham Darby I took the lease of the Coalbrookdale furnace itself and, that same year, first successfully smelted iron using coke rather than charcoal, drawing on the colliery's own coal. Coalbrookdale is not, strictly, the site of the world's very first coke-fired blast furnace, but it was the first in Europe to operate successfully for more than a few years, and the coal and ironstone raised from the Coalbrookdale Company's own pits underpinned the ironworks' output for generations afterward -- including, from 1778, Abraham Darby III's casting of the parts for the world's first cast-iron bridge, opened at Ironbridge in 1780. The colliery's own working history was not without tragedy: on 3 July 1856 an explosion at the Old Coal Pit, then run by the partnership of Couttwell and Lewis, killed eleven men and boys, two of them rescuers who died going to the aid of the first victims. The subsequent Mines Inspector's report, by Mr Brough, found the explosion was caused by management's neglect of the colliery's own Special Rules for ventilation: safety lamps had not been locked, and there was no single main ventilation door to control the flow of air underground.

Geology

Coal and ironstone of the East Shropshire coalfield, worked together to supply the adjoining Coalbrookdale ironworks.

Workings

Worked coal and ironstone to supply the adjoining Coalbrookdale ironworks; the Old Coal Pit, the site of the 1856 explosion, relied on safety lamps and ventilation doors that an official inquiry found had been neglected.

Closure

The closure date is not known for the colliery specifically; the ironworks itself wound down blast-furnace production long before its 250th anniversary was marked in 1959 with the opening of a small museum on the site, later folded into the Ironbridge Gorge Museums.

What remains

No physical remains specific to the coal and ironstone workings themselves are recorded independently of the ironworks they fed; the Coalbrookdale Coalfield as a whole was largely built over as the town of Telford grew, and its last deep mine (Granville, unconnected to Coalbrookdale itself) closed in 1979. The valley's industrial landscape survives instead through the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, centred on the preserved 1709 blast furnace and Museum of Iron.

Disasters & major incidents

• Old Coal Pit Explosion, Coalbrookdale (1856)
  3 July 1856 · Explosion · 11 fatalities
  An explosion caused by neglected ventilation rules at the Old Coal Pit, Coalbrookdale, killed eleven men and boys, including two who died attempting a rescue.

Recorded claims

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

• In 1709 Abraham Darby I took the lease of the Coalbrookdale furnace and first successfully smelted iron using coke rather than charcoal, drawing on coal from the company's own colliery; Coalbrookdale was not the world's first coke-fired blast furnace, but the first in Europe to operate successfully for more than a few years. ^1,2
• On 3 July 1856 an explosion at the Old Coal Pit, then operated by Couttwell and Lewis, killed eleven men and boys, two of them rescuers; the Mines Inspector's report attributed the cause to management's neglect of the colliery's own Special Rules for ventilation -- unlocked safety lamps and no single main ventilation door. ³
• The Coalbrookdale furnace, damaged in an explosion, was sublet to Abraham Darby in 1708 and rebuilt; the company he founded in 1709 became principal lessee of the works in 1715 and, after his death in 1717, passed to a group led by Thomas Goldney of Bristol under the management of Richard Ford. ¹
• In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Coalbrookdale coalfield was second only to the North East in output, producing 95 per cent of Shropshire's coal; by 1896 it had more than eighty working mines. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Coalbrookdale Co — Graces Guide
2. (secondary) Coalbrookdale Coalfield — Wikipedia
3. (secondary) Old Coal Pit Explosion - Coalbrookdale - 1856 — Northern Mine Research Society

Record created: 31 August 2026 · Last researched: 24 September 2026