Heaton Colliery

Overview

A colliery and brickworks at the Shipley end of what is now Heaton Woods, north of Bradford, working the thin north-Bradford seams and the fireclay under them. The brickworks ran from about 1855 under George Heaton, whose name the bricks carry, until his death in 1874; the 1880 return shows two Heaton pits at work under different owners.

History

Heaton and Shipley were being mined long before the pits that appear in the returns: there is documentary evidence for coal getting in Baildon, Heaton, Shipley, Frizinghall and Eccleshill in the early seventeenth century, and Heaton coal pits were supplying a brick kiln by 1776. The colliery this record covers stood at the Shipley end of the amenity woodland now called Heaton Woods, on a site known as Taffy Mires, and worked coal and fireclay together with a brickworks alongside. Its bricks are stamped G. Heaton, Shipley, after George Heaton — a Lancastrian, as it happens, rather than a man named for the township — and the works ran from 1855 or a little earlier until his death in 1874. Despite the brick's reddish colour it is largely fireclay, dug on the site. A chimney marked the spot into living memory. The official return of collieries at work in 1880 carries two Heaton entries in the Bradford district under different owners — 'Heaton (Shipley Moor), Bradford, Joseph Briggs and Sons' and 'Heaton (Shipley), Bradford, John R. Fyfe and Co.' Which of the two is the Taffy Mires works, and whether they were two pits or one working split between two takes, is not established by anything read here.

Geology

North Bradford's coal came from the Hard Bed, Soft Bed and Thirty-Six Yard seams, the deepest in the local Coal Measures, and the seams here were thin and relatively unproductive compared with the thicker beds worked at the better-capitalised pits south of the town, which fed the Bowling and Low Moor blast furnaces. The Heaton and Northcliffe workings probably took the Soft Bed. Under the coal lay the fireclay that made the site worth a brickworks as well as a pit.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

Nothing of the layout is recorded in the sources read beyond the pairing of colliery and brickworks on one site, with the fireclay extracted where it was used. Mining in this part of Bradford was by shafts to the seam with galleries worked pillar and stall, and by day-holes and drifts where the ground allowed; which method was used here is not established.

Closure

No closure date has been established. The brickworks ended with George Heaton's death in 1874; the colliery was still returned as at work in 1880.

What remains

The site is inside Heaton Woods, amenity woodland on the north side of Bradford. Walks in Heaton or Northcliffe Woods still show unmistakable evidence of a mining landscape, though most old workings in the district are concealed by later development. The brickworks chimney stood until about twenty years before the account used here was written.

Earthworks of the mining landscape survive in Heaton Woods generally; nothing is identified in the sources read as belonging specifically to this colliery.

Redevelopment

The ground is now amenity woodland rather than built over.

Nearby mines

• Bramley Fall Quarry — 10.5 km E

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 return of collieries at work in 1880 lists both 'Heaton (Shipley Moor), Bradford, Joseph Briggs and Sons' and 'Heaton (Shipley), Bradford, John R. Fyfe and Co.' ¹
• The colliery and brickworks stood at the Shipley end of Heaton Woods on a site called Taffy Mires; the works ran from 1855 or a little earlier until George Heaton's death in 1874, and the bricks, though reddish, are largely fireclay dug on site. ²
• The coal mined in north Bradford came largely from the Hard Bed, Soft Bed and Thirty-Six Yard seams, which are thin and relatively unproductive compared with the seams worked south of the town. ³
• There is documentary evidence for mining in Baildon, Heaton, Shipley, Frizinghall and Eccleshill in the early seventeenth century. ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) List of coal mines UK 1880 — Coalmining History Resource Centre
2. (secondary) Old Bricks: England H, page 10a — G. Heaton, Shipley — Old Bricks: history at your feet
3. (secondary) Neglected Bradford industries: Coal mining, by Derek Barker — Bradford and District Local Studies

Record created: 6 September 2026 · Last researched: 8 September 2026