Great Bridge Colliery

Overview

Mr T. Morris's Friary Field pit at Great Bridge, near Dudley Port, 274 yards deep, where an explosion killed fourteen men and boys in June 1849 when the pit was restarted after standing since the Saturday.

History

The colliery at Great Bridge, near Dudley Port in the Black Country, was known as Friary Field, and also as the Friary Field of Moat Colliery. In 1849 it belonged to Mr T. Morris. The pit was 274 yards deep and worked from seven roads, each seventy to eighty yards long. Old workings beside a fault were sealed off by a dam, and a doggy, or underground charge-hand, oversaw each working.

The pit had stood idle from the Saturday. When about seventy men and boys went down on the Tuesday morning, a collier found a good deal of gas in the outside stall next to the fault and air coming over the top of the dam. The doggy, Thomas Pritchard, unscrewed his safety lamp to light a candle and went up to the dam, and the gas fired. By eleven that night sixty-two had been brought out alive. Fourteen died, Pritchard among them, and many of the dead were boys from Dudley Port, Park Lane and Toll End. Later returns differ on the toll: the report for 1853 gives fifteen, and the Mining Almanack for 1850 twenty-five dead and forty-three injured.

Geology

South Staffordshire Coal Measures, the workings cut by a fault.

Workings

A shaft of 274 yards with seven roads of seventy to eighty yards; a dam with a spout sealing old ground near a fault; safety lamps carried by the doggies.

Closure

Unknown.

What remains

Unknown.

Redevelopment

Unknown.

Disasters & major incidents

• Great Bridge Colliery explosion, 1849
  June 1849 · Explosion · 14 fatalities
  In June 1849, when about seventy men and boys went down Mr Morris's Friary Field pit at Great Bridge after it had stood idle since the Saturday, an explosion killed fourteen. The doggy, Thomas Pritchard, was said to have caused it by unscrewing his lamp; he was among the dead.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• The report for 1853 gives fifteen dead; the Mining Almanack for 1850 twenty-five dead and forty-three injured. (disputed) ¹

Recorded claims

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

• The colliery at Great Bridge was called Friary Field, also the Friary Field of Moat Colliery, and was owned by Mr Morris. ^1,2
• The pit was 274 yards deep with seven roads seventy to eighty yards long. ¹
• In June 1849 an explosion killed fourteen after the doggy unscrewed his lamp near the dam. ^1,2
• The report for 1853 gives fifteen dead; the Mining Almanack for 1850 twenty-five dead and forty-three injured. (disputed) ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Great Bridge Colliery Explosion - Dudley - 1849 — Northern Mine Research Society
2. (primary) Colliery Disaster: Great Bridge, 28 June 1849 — Durham Mining Museum

Record created: 3 October 2026 · Last researched: 3 October 2026