Great Wyrley Colliery

Overview

The Great Wyrley Colliery Company's pits at the southern edge of the Cannock Chase coalfield, worked from at least 1872 to 1925 on the Bass, Deep and Shallow seams with ironstone, and five to six hundred people from the 1890s. The company's disused pits closed the western branch of the Wyrley and Essington Canal, and its ground is not to be confused with Harrison's Wyrley No. 3, the big pit of 1896 that outlived it by forty years.

History

Coal and ironstone were being mined in Great Wyrley by 1642, and several pits were at work by 1817, but the parish's industry grew with the canal and the railway: the Wyrley New Colliery Company by 1860, the Hatherton Colliery by 1862, the Wyrley Cannock Colliery Company with seven or eight shafts until 1882, and the Great Wyrley Colliery Company, in operation between at least 1872 and 1924 according to the Victoria County History, or 1875 to 1925 in the Lists of Mines. The Durham Mining Museum dates the colliery from 1806 and gives the owners as the Great Wyrley Colliery Co. and then the Co. Ltd; it returned household, manufacturing and steam coal with ironstone, employing 506 in 1894, 558 in 1900, 612 in 1910 and 596 in 1915 on the Bass, Deep and Shallow seams. The Cannock Chase Mining Historical Society's timeline records the Great Wyrley pit closing in 1925. The museum's page runs on to 1923 with a No. 2 pit of 212 people and a No. 3 of 621, but by then the big No. 3 was Harrison's: Messrs W. Harrison opened Wyrley No. 3 in 1896 and worked it until nationalisation, and it merged with the Grove in 1952 and Mid Cannock in 1963, so those later figures belong to a different colliery and are not counted here. Harrison's Club of about 1900 in Wharwell Lane was built by those colliery owners. The canal branch that had served the Great Wyrley pits terminated among them, disused by 1956, and the parish's western levels are still the overgrown deposits of the old collieries. Twenty deaths are named between 1858 and 1932, all single: stallmen killed by coal they were wedging down or by the sudden fall of holed coal, a cogger under the tubs, a horse driver of thirteen crushed by a slab of shale in 1901, and Thomas Lavender, a stallman, killed by an explosion of firedamp in May 1907. An old watchman, John Lawrance, walked into the pit in the dark in December 1858. The village's other claim on history, the Great Wyrley Outrages of 1903 and the wrongful conviction of George Edalji for slashing a pit pony, was a matter for Conan Doyle rather than the colliery.

Geology

Cannock Chase coalfield at its southern margin by the Bentley Fault: the Bass, Deep and Shallow coals with ironstone.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

Stall working with holing sprags in the nineteenth century, a picking belt carried on brick pillars at the surface, and railway sidings; the Lists return the company's pits together, with Nos 2 and 3 named by 1915.

Closure

Closed in 1925 (the VCH's last record of the company is 1924); the pits were disused by the time the canal branch that served them was abandoned, before 1956.

What remains

The VCH described the west of the parish in the 1950s as overgrown deposits from old disused collieries, with the canal terminating among the company's disused pits. No photograph of the site was found.

Overgrown spoil in the west of the parish; the dry canal branch.

Nearby mines

• Cannock and Leacroft Colliery — 3.5 km N
• Holly Bank Colliery — 4.1 km SW
• Pelsall Hall Colliery — 4.7 km SE, West Midlands
• Grove Colliery — 5.4 km E
• Cannock Old Coppice Colliery — 5.5 km NE

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 Great Wyrley Colliery Company was in operation between at least 1872 and 1924 (VCH); the museum dates the colliery 1806 to August 1949 and the mining society's timeline has the Great Wyrley pit closing in 1925. (disputed) ^1,2,3
• 506 employed in 1894, 479 in 1896, 558 in 1900, 586 in 1905, 612 in 1910 and 596 in 1915 on the Bass, Deep and Shallow seams, with ironstone. ²
• Messrs W. Harrison opened the large Wyrley No. 3 pit in 1896, still working in 1956; it merged with the Grove in 1952 and Mid Cannock in 1963, and is a different colliery. ^1,3
• Twenty named deaths 1858–1932, all single, including Thomas Lavender killed by firedamp in 1907 and George Turner, a horse driver of thirteen, in 1901. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Rough Time Line — Cannock Chase Mining History Society
2. (secondary) Great Wyrley — Durham Mining Museum — Durham Mining Museum
3. (secondary) Great Wyrley — A History of the County of Stafford, vol. 5 (British History Online) — Victoria County History
4. (secondary) Cannock Chase Coalfield — Wikipedia
5. (secondary) Great Wyrley — Wikipedia — Wikipedia

Record created: 12 September 2026 · Last researched: 12 September 2026