MineArchiveMines
63 mines beginning with F, of 1950.
| Mine | Region | Worked | Commodities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Faggergill Mine Its closure marked the end of roughly 800 years of lead mining in Arkengarthdale following miners' strikes against strict new working hours imposed in 1870. |
North Yorkshire | By 1521–1914 | Lead |
| Fairykirk Quarry Named from a cliff the Ordnance Survey was told was a resort of fairies, and now climbed for sport. |
Fife | Working by the mid-19th century–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Whinstone |
| Fallahill Colliery Four pits at Fauldhouse for fifteen years, and an underground fire that killed four men in 1902. |
West Lothian | 1890–1905 | Coal |
| Fallowfield Mine Went bust on lead, then made its name on the mineral it had been tipping as waste |
Northumberland | Documented from 1611; probably Roman in origin–1911 | Witherite, Lead, Barite |
| Far Green Colliery Known to its men as the Big Pit: an engineman answered a question through the engine-house window in 1859 and wound sixteen men and boys over the pulley. |
Staffordshire | By 1859–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Coal |
| Farme Colliery Three Newcomen engines still at work in 1879, one of them the only rotative Newcomen left in Europe. |
South Lanarkshire | Established in the early 1800s–17 July 1931 | Coal |
| Faucet Rake Incorporates Oxlow Cavern, considered Britain's deepest cave when it was discovered. |
Derbyshire | Worked by at least 1680; main period from c.1780–Mid-19th century | Lead |
| Fauld Fauld went from an unremarkable Staffordshire gypsum mine to the site of Britain's largest ever explosion almost by accident of geography — chosen for its rural obscurity, the same isolation that made it a good bomb store also meant a single mistake there could do more damage than almost anywhere else in the country without immediately being noticed. |
Staffordshire | gypsum worked from the 19th century; RAF ammunition depot from 1937–Still active | Gypsum |
| Fauldhead Colliery The largest pit of the isolated Sanquhar and Kirkconnel coalfield, whose closure in 1968 put six hundred men out of work in a valley with little else. |
Dumfries and Galloway | 1896–1968 | Coal, Brick Clay |
| Fauldhouse Colliery William Dixon's cluster of numbered ironstone and coal pits around Fauldhouse, feeding the Govan ironworks until the ironstone ran out in 1891. |
West Lothian | By 1855–c. 1896 (Dixon's pits); Knowes No. 1 to 1946 | Coal, Ironstone |
| Fawler Ironstone Mine One of the few Oxfordshire ironstone workings driven underground in galleries rather than simply quarried at outcrop — a pony driver's own testimony in 1886 records 'a large amount had been got' by then. |
Oxfordshire | Recognised as workable ore in the 1850s; worked from about 1859–Already 'disused' by the 1884 Ordnance Survey map | Iron |
| Fee Donald Mine One of five distinct lead mines in the historic Strontian mining district -- Corrantee, Middleshop, Fee Donald, Bellsgrove and Whitesmith -- and, per Historic Environment Scotland's own scheduling, one of only two well-preserved lead workings surviving from that district today. |
Highland | 1727–1871 | Lead |
| Felinfran Colliery To ventilate its Graigola workings it pumped out a pit abandoned forty years earlier and ran its return air through the old shaft bottom under a nickel refinery's yard. |
Swansea | 1931-32; completed 1935–13 December 1965 | Coal |
| Felixstowe and Trimley Coprolite Diggings Farm labourers dug up what a Cambridge professor took for fossil dung, and it became the world's first artificial chemical fertiliser — most of it was not fossil dung |
Suffolk | Nodules identified in the Felixstowe cliffs in 1842–Worked out in this area by the 1880s | Coprolite |
| Felling Colliery The Tyneside pit whose 1812 explosion killed 92 and set in train the invention of the miners' safety lamp |
Tyne and Wear | 1779–1931 | Coal |
| Fence Colliery A small colliery at Fence, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, sunk in the 1840s alongside the Rother Valley. |
South Yorkshire | 1840s–1904 (pumping station to 1957) | Coal |
| Fenton Park Colliery The colliery the Potteries dug for itself — leased in 1790 to a company of potters that came to include Spode, Wolfe and Minton, and the most notable pit in Fenton by 1840. |
Staffordshire | 1728–c. 1879–c. 1879 | Coal, Ironstone |
| Fergushill Colliery Not one colliery but a numbered field of small Ayrshire pits, the numbers running past thirty as each patch was worked out and the next sunk. |
North Ayrshire | By 1855–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Coal |
| Ferndale Collieries Two explosions within two years of each other killed 231 men and boys between them — a toll that, combined, ranks among the worst suffered by any single South Wales colliery. |
Rhondda Cynon Taf | No.1 pit sunk from 1857; Four-Feet seam struck June 1862–1959-1960 | Coal |
| Fernhill Colliery For its last decade, Fernhill wasn't really a separate mine at all in working terms — its own shafts fed straight across the Rhigos mountain into Tower Colliery, which did the actual job of bringing the coal out. |
Rhondda Cynon Taf | Sunk 1869-71–1978 | Coal |
| Fernhurst Furnace (North Park Furnace) Recorded as 'ruined' in 1664, then brought back to life a century later purely to cast cannon for two wars, before finally closing for good in the 1770s |
West Sussex | Working by 1614–1776 or 1777 | Iron |
| Ferrymoor Colliery Grimethorpe's shallow second pit, a 72-yard drift that ended its life as part of the most productive mine in Britain — and was shut anyway. |
South Yorkshire | 1915–16–1988 (as Ferrymoor-Riddings-South Kirkby) | Coal |
| Ffaldau Colliery Sunk in 1876 and worked for 109 years; when the Coal Board closed it in 1985 it cut the cage ropes and poured 200,000 tonnes of hardcore down the shaft. |
Bridgend | 1876–November 1985 | Coal |
| Ffaldydre Colliery It was closed in 1963 not for lack of coal but because the neighbouring Glyncastle pit could not keep its men, so Ffaldydre's miners were moved there. |
Neath Port Talbot | Level by 1837; drift opened 1914–28 September 1963 (or April 1965) | Coal |
| Fforchaman Colliery Brown's Pit at Cwmaman, sunk to the Aberdare Four-Feet and closed seam by seam in 1965. |
Rhondda Cynon Taf | Sunk in the 1850s; 1851 and 1856 are both given–25 September 1965 | Coal |
| Ffos-y-Fran Britain's last major opencast coal mine, worked for over a year after its own planning permission had already expired |
Merthyr Tydfil | Final approval November 2006; production from 2007–30 November 2023 | Coal |
| Ffrwd Colliery A Wrexham colliery, ironworks and brickworks in one, opened to feed its own furnaces and closed for good two years after the ironmaster who built it up died. |
Wrexham | c. 1790s (estate pits); c. 1850 (colliery)–1904 | Coal, Fireclay, Ironstone |
| Firbeck Colliery Sixty men died at this one colliery over 43 years of work — never enough at once to count as a single disaster, but a toll that adds up all the same. |
Nottinghamshire | 1923-25 (sunk); coal from 1925–31 December 1968 | Coal |
| Fishburn Colliery A pit that grew sevenfold in twenty years and ended up piping its own town gas to a hospital and the national grid. |
County Durham | 1910–1973 | Coal |
| Flimby Colliery Its Rattler seam was given up as unworkable for faults, and among the twenty-three deaths recorded here is a woman: Mary Hines, picker and greaser, crushed by tubs on the surface incline in 1869. |
Cumbria | By 1855–1909 | Coal |
| Flockton Collieries The company that ran these pits gave its workers a library and allotments, and the 1841 child-labour commissioners praised it while recording girls hauling tubs underground. |
West Yorkshire | A pit recorded in 1515–1894 | Coal, Ironstone |
| Florence Colliery The 3rd Duke of Sutherland named it after his eldest daughter, built it a private railway, and bought his own locomotives to work it. |
Staffordshire | 1874–1990s | Coal |
| Florence Mine The last deep working iron ore mine in England, kept alive at the end by its own redundant workers |
Cumbria | 1914–2007 | Iron |
| Fochriw Colliery A colliery sunk specifically to feed one company's own blast furnaces, worked through at least four serious accidents in seventy years, then shut overnight for purely economic reasons. |
Caerphilly | 1823 (drift); 1853 (deep shaft)–1924 | Coal |
| Force Crag Mine Last working metal mine in the Lake District; National Trust site |
Cumbria | 1839–1990 | Lead, Zinc, Barite, Silver |
| Force Garth Quarry Works almost the full 70-metre thickness of the Great Whin Sill, one of northern England's most distinctive geological features. |
County Durham | 1932–Still active | Whinstone |
| Fordel Mains Colliery A small Midlothian pit on Bryan's Splint, a seam named for a village miles away. |
Midlothian | Returned from 1920; sinking date not established–Last return 1940; closure date not established | Coal |
| Fordell Colliery The wagonway built here in the 1770s to move coal to Inverkeithing, shown on Ainslie's 1775 map, was one of the earliest railways in Scotland. |
Fife | Wagonway shown on Ainslie's Map of 1775; William Pit sunk 1843/44–William Pit closed 28 October 1950 | Coal |
| Foredale Quarry A Ribblesdale limestone quarry high above the dale, its stone lowered by rope-hauled incline to the kilns |
North Yorkshire | 1878–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Limestone |
| Forge Colliery, Nantyglo One of John Lancaster's earliest pits; at least six named men died here between 1857 and 1871, including one in a gas explosion. |
Blaenau Gwent | By 1857, possibly earlier–1878–88 | Coal |
| Forge Slope Colliery A small slope whose people were folded into Big Pit, on the hillside where the basic steel process was proved the year before it opened. |
Torfaen | 1878–June 1931 | Coal |
| Foss Mine Foss is described by some geologists as the largest single accumulation of barium ore anywhere in the world — a genuinely global superlative sitting on an unassuming Perthshire hillside. |
Perth and Kinross | 1984 (production; deposit found in the 1970s)–2021 | Barite |
| Foulshiels Colliery Stoneyburn's own pit, whose No. 2 shaft breathed for Loganlea next door and whose 1935 baths and Bents housing scheme were United Collieries' welfare in brick. |
West Lothian | By 1894–1957 | Coal |
| Fowey Consols Joseph Treffry built a canal, a harbour and an aqueduct to serve these copper mines, which at their height employed around 1,800 people. |
Cornwall | 1813–1867 | Copper, Zinc |
| Foxdale Mines Once the Isle of Man's most productive mining district |
Isle of Man | 1724–1911 | Lead, Silver, Zinc |
| Foxes Bridge Colliery One of the largest collieries in the Forest of Dean, drowned in 1930 by water running in from a neighbour that had closed the year before — and refused help by the Crown, which held the royalties. |
Gloucestershire | 1855–10 August 1930 | Coal |
| Foxfield Colliery The last deep mine left standing in the Cheadle Coalfield — literally, since both of its original headgears still stand today, under active restoration by the heritage railway that now runs where its wagons once did. |
Staffordshire | Early 1880s (company formed 1893)–1965 | Coal |
| Foxyards Colliery Where the Thick Coal flattens out from vertical and was once worked in an open quarry — and where a ground bailiff told the Geological Survey it must be a different seam because a shale parting was a foot thicker. |
West Midlands | By 1855–After 1880 | Coal, Fireclay |
| Framlington Colliery A small landsale colliery that sold its coal over the weighbridge to whoever came for it, and passed through six owners in seventy years. |
Northumberland | By 1860–31 December 1931 | Coal |
| Frances Colliery An undersea Fife colliery that closed after underground fires broke out during the 1984 strike, becoming a symbol of the coalfield's collapse; its preserved 1943 headframe is recorded as the last complete example of its type of traditional Scottish winding gear. |
Fife | Sinking began 1874; reached the Dysart Main seam by 1878–Production ceased 3 February 1985 ('Black Sunday') | Coal |
| Frank Mills Mine The toxicity of Frank Mills' own waste has, in its way, preserved a piece of the mine's history: more than a century on, its spoil heaps remain too contaminated with lead and arsenic for anything to grow on them. |
Devon | 1847 (search for northern lode extension); main working from 1854–1880 | Lead, Silver, Barite, Fluorspar, Iron |
| Frankland Fold Mine A named 18th-century working within the historic Grassington Moor lead field, once revitalised by the Duke of Devonshire's mining engineer John Taylor. |
North Yorkshire | 1735–1853 | Lead |
| Frazer's Hush Mine The mine takes its name from a centuries-old hushing site — men flooding and breaching a dam to strip the hillside bare by hand — that was already ancient history by the time 20th-century drilling turned the same ground into a modern fluorspar mine. |
County Durham | early 1970s–1999 | Fluorspar, Lead |
| Fremington Edge Quarry Chert mined underground above Swaledale and sent to the Potteries to grind flint into china. |
North Yorkshire | Returning by 1905–Still returning in 1950 | Chert |
| Frickley Colliery Frickley miners were among the very last in the country to go back to work after the 1984-85 strike ended — refusing to cross a picket line of their own union brothers from Kent. |
South Yorkshire | Sinking started 23 April 1903; Barnsley seam reached 23 May 1905–26 November 1993 | Coal |
| Frizington Iron Mines Frizington's iron ore was so prized for its purity that miners nicknamed it 'the Rolls Royce of ores'. |
Cumbria | 19th-century boom; specific mines include Parkside (from 1855)–Large-scale West Cumbrian haematite mining ended by the late 1970s | Iron, Barite |
| Frodingham Ironstone Mines A 25-per-cent ore that built a steel town — and was abandoned not when it ran out but when better ore could be unloaded at Immingham |
Lincolnshire | 1859–1981 (underground working) | Iron |
| Froggatt Wood Smelt Mill No document anywhere records this smelt mill's existence -- a 1799 estate map omits it entirely -- yet it survives as one of only a few standing 16th/17th-century examples left in England. |
Derbyshire | 16th- or 17th-century in character–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Lead |
| Fron-Boeth and Pant Mawr Quarry Its access tramway included a roughly 500-yard tunnel through the ridge between Cwm Croesor and Cwm Maesgwyn -- one of the only tunnels in North Wales built purely to carry a tramway rather than as part of a mine, and among the longest cut anywhere for horse-drawn traffic. |
Gwynedd | Pant Mawr began working around 1850–Both closed during the First World War. | Slate |
| Frongoch Mine Major Victorian Welsh lead producer |
Ceredigion | 1792–1910 | Lead, Zinc |
| Frosterley Marble Quarries Produced the fossil-rich black 'marble' used to decorate Durham Cathedral's Chapel of the Nine Altars. |
County Durham | worked from at least 1183–marble quarrying largely ceased by the 20th century | Limestone, Fluorspar |
| Fryston Colliery Sunk in the grounds of a demolished country house, it washed its neighbours’ coal as well as its own — and when it shut in 1985 Wheldale had to build a washer. |
West Yorkshire | 1870s–1985 | Coal |
| Furzebrook and Norden Ball Clay Pits The Blue Pool's colour, now a tourist draw, is a direct physical trace of the clay that was once dug there. Not all of the workings were so gentle: Creech Barrow, one of the group's mines, reached around 800 feet underground. |
Dorset | Worked from the 18th century–1999 (last underground working) | Ball Clay |