Mines

Region

Commodity

98 mines beginning with M, of 1950.

Mine	Region	Worked	Commodities
Maenofferen Quarry One of Blaenau Ffestiniog's major slate quarries, first worked shortly after 1800.	Gwynedd	first worked shortly after 1800; incorporated as a company in 1861–underground production ended 1998 or 1999 (sources disagree)	Slate
Maerdy Colliery Known as 'Little Moscow' for its militant union politics, it was the last working colliery in the Rhondda Valley when it closed after 115 years.	Rhondda Cynon Taf	sunk 1875-76–21 December 1990	Coal
Maes Marchog Colliery The Royal Commission of 1842 recorded first-hand testimony from its owner on working conditions; opencast-worked again as late as 1979.	Neath Port Talbot	By 1743; reopened as Waen-Marchog 1791–Between 1916 and 1932 (opencast-worked again 1979)	Coal
Maesygamfa Quarry One of three quarries run in tandem by the same manager, Edward Hurst Davies, who went on -- after his Maesygamfa partner's death and years working elsewhere -- to buy one of the other two, Hendreddu, outright.	Gwynedd	A small-scale Broad Vein working existed here in the 1860s–Closed in 1909; the lease was formally relinquished in December 1911.	Slate
Magheramorne Quarry To reach the chalk they stripped 100 m of basalt off the top and tipped it in the lough, making a 70-hectare peninsula that is still there.	County Antrim	Early 19th century–1980 (quarrying)	Chalk, Limestone
Magpie Mine Notorious 1833 fatal feud; best-preserved Peak District lead mine	Derbyshire	1740–1958	Lead
Mainsforth Colliery A Durham pit abandoned as a rubbish dump in 1877 and dug out again twenty-three years later	County Durham	1873; reopened from c. 1900–6 December 1968	Coal
Maltby Colliery One unidentified victim of the 1923 explosion, recovered too badly injured by heat and rockfall to name, was buried locally simply as 'The Unknown Miner'.	South Yorkshire	Sinking began 1908; first coal 1912–2013	Coal
Mamble Colliery Sulphurous coal unwanted by the metal trades found a niche use flavouring beer, carried via hop-drying kilns fired with Mamble coal — while an early attempt at the pit ended when an underground explosion drove its owner to abandon the workings altogether in 1903.	Worcestershire	Local mining from at least 1811 (Newlands Colliery)–February 1950	Coal
Mandale Mine Notable surviving engine-house remains near Bakewell	Derbyshire	1797–1851	Lead
Manod Quarry For four years of the Second World War, this Welsh mountain held the National Gallery's entire collection.	Gwynedd	1780s–Suspended 1960; resumed 1985 -- still an active slate working	Slate
Mansfield Colliery The Bolsover company's Crownie pit, which brought 2,500 miners to open country east of Mansfield and built Forest Town to house them.	Nottinghamshire	1904-5–Early 1988	Coal
Manton Colliery Twenty-nine collieries closed across Britain in the same twelve months as Manton — a single winter that erased the better part of a century's work in one purpose-built model village.	Nottinghamshire	Sinking started 1897; coal getting began June 1905–11 February 1994	Coal
Manvers Main Colliery By its peak, the coking plant built alongside this colliery had grown into one of the largest industrial sites anywhere in Europe.	South Yorkshire	Shafts sunk from May 1867; Barnsley seam reached 1870–25 March 1988	Coal
Mapperley Colliery The Glendon Iron Company's Simon Fields Pit of 1872 near Ilkeston, closed 1965, remembered for the under-manager who walked into the workings in 1918 and was never found.	Derbyshire	1872–27 March 1965	Coal
Marchlyn Quarry Dinorwic's highest and latest quarry, its ground taken for the upper reservoir of a pumped-storage power station	Gwynedd	No reliable opening date has yet been located.–1969 (with Dinorwic)	Slate
Marford Quarry A sand and gravel quarry that helped build the Mersey Tunnel, destroyed a medieval castle mound, and is now a nature reserve for bees and wasps.	Wrexham	1927–1971	Sand and Gravel
Margaret Mine The last iron ore mine working in the Furness district, closed in 1960 not because its ore ran out but because it had become too soft to sell.	Cumbria	By the 1930s (exact opening date not established)–1960	Iron
Marine Colliery A Cwm colliery, sunk 1889-91, later the site of a serious 1927 explosion.	Blaenau Gwent	1889-91 (sinking); coal from 1893–March 1989	Coal
Maritime Colliery Sunk on faulty ground where three or four successive companies lost heavily before anyone made it pay.	Rhondda Cynon Taf	1841–June 1961	Coal
Marke Valley Mine Once the Liskeard and Caradon Railway reached it in 1877 this became the second-largest copper producer in the district behind only South Caradon.	Cornwall	1828 (first attempt); Marke Valley Tin and Copper Mine Co formed 1837–1890	Copper, Tin
Markham Colliery 106 steel figures walk the route from the former colliery to Duckmanton village, one for every man killed across three separate disasters spanning 36 years.	Derbyshire	Leased 1882; No.1 pit in production by 1885; No.2 sunk 1886–Production ended 2 July 1993; formally closed 1994	Coal
Markham Main Colliery A Doncaster pit whose defiant miners were the last in Yorkshire to return to work after the 1984-85 strike, in the confrontation remembered as the 'Battle of Markham Main'.	South Yorkshire	1916 (sunk); first coal 1924–1996	Coal
Marrick Lead Mines A lead ingot bearing the Emperor Hadrian's name, found in these workings and now held by the British Museum, is the one hard clue that Marrick's lead mines may be among the oldest in the country.	North Yorkshire	Worked from at least the Norman period–Production declined through the 19th century	Lead
Marsden Quarry Quarry, colliery, kilns and a passenger railway called the Rattler, all one operation, and only the quarry left.	Tyne and Wear	By the 1870s; the returns begin in 1896–Still worked; the kilns and colliery closed in the 1960s	Limestone
Masson Hill Mine A Derbyshire lead-mining complex riddled with natural caves enlarged by medieval miners, two of which still operate as show caves at the Heights of Abraham.	Derbyshire	Medieval (documented 1470)–Hand-picked shafts and coffin levels continued into the 20th century	Lead, Fluorspar
Mauricewood Colliery It took over six months to recover all the dead — the last bodies weren't brought up until March 1890, half a year after the fire that killed them.	Midlothian	1870s (approximate)–1889 (closed following the disaster)	Coal
Maury Mine and Sough A new drainage sough, begun to unwater the mine at greater depth, finally broke through to it in 1774 -- only to discover that most of its ore had already been worked out.	Derbyshire	Probably established by the 17th century–Disused by 1880	Lead
Mawstone Mine A 1932 gas explosion here killed eight men, five miners and three would-be rescuers, in one of the last major disasters of Derbyshire's lead-mining industry.	Derbyshire	Working by c.1700–Closed 1932, after the explosion	Lead
Maxwood Colliery The last pit working in Galston: when Maxwood stopped in 1933, mining in the burgh stopped with it.	East Ayrshire	By 1880–1933	Coal
Maypit Mine Maypit is remembered less for what it produced than for what its dispute with Magpie Mine cost -- three lives lost to a fire lit specifically to drive its own miners out of contested ground.	Derbyshire	by 1825–19th century	Lead
Maypole Colliery The last victim of its 1908 explosion was not brought to the surface until 1917 — nine years after the disaster that killed him	Lancashire	Opened 1895; fully operational by 1898–1930s	Coal
Mayshill Colliery Gave its name to the small hamlet of Mayshill, on the Badminton Road between Coalpit Heath and Nibley, home to the New Inn -- one of at least nine pubs in the parish, dating from 1580.	Gloucestershire	Producing coal prior to 1832 as one of three pits–Closed by 1949	Coal
McLaren Colliery Three names for one pit — Pwll Llaca, McLaren, then Abertysswg — and a village built around it from nothing in five years.	Caerphilly	1897–1969	Coal
Meadow Colliery, Haigh Wigan Coal and Iron's Meadow Pit on the Earl of Crawford's Haigh ground, 633 strong in 1923 and closed by 1927; the lane keeps its name.	Greater Manchester	1880 (museum)–1925 (museum)	Coal
Meall Luaidhe Mines A short-lived 18th-century lead venture in Glen Lyon, part of Perthshire's minor and scattered lead-mining record alongside the better-known but still relatively small Tyndrum mines.	Perthshire	c. 1730–Soon after c. 1730	Lead
Measham Colliery Riddled with unrecorded shafts by the 1720s and twice abandoned as unworkable, it ended as a fully mechanised retreat face taking six and a half feet out of a seam nearly eight feet thick.	Leicestershire	Worked from the 1500s; Abney’s shafts 1856–57–27 June 1986	Coal
Medlyn Moor Mine A Wendron tin mine whose lodes were found by tin streamers in the bed of the River Cober and mined into the hillside.	Cornwall	1846 (earlier as stream ground)–1879	Tin
Medomsley Colliery Eight men and boys died riding up the shaft when worn cage shoes let their cage slip its guides.	County Durham	1839–6 October 1972	Coal
Meerbrook Sough Mine Its sough drained a rival mill's water supply so effectively it put the mills out of business -- and its winding engine, made in 1844, was dismantled and rebuilt twice before finding a permanent home.	Derbyshire	Sough portal dated 1772–Engine removed c.1870	Lead
Meiklehill Colliery A Kirkintilloch pit whose 1918 explosion made a Court of Session compensation precedent.	East Dunbartonshire	Working by 1866; returned to the Inspectors from 1894–Last return 1923; closure date not established	Coal, Ironstone
Meldon Quarry A working railway ballast quarry that also exposed a rare banded aplite dyke, unusual enough to be designated its own separate SSSI as the only sodium-potassium-lithium pegmatite recorded anywhere in Britain.	Devon	Small quarry opened 1874; considerably developed from 1897–Hornfels quarrying ceased 2012; site mothballed	Aplite, Granite
Meliden Lead Mines Kept working, wet ground and all, by an unbroken sequence of ever more powerful pumping engines for over two centuries — from one of Wales's earliest Newcomen engines in the 1710s-30s to fifteen steam engines running together by 1874.	Denbighshire	Worked from at least the 1630s–Pumps stopped 1884; last men underground 1899; final surface work 1905	Lead, Zinc
Melton Bottom Chalk Pit The type locality of the Welton Chalk Formation, and still the source of 300,000 tonnes of industrial chalk a year.	East Riding of Yorkshire	1920s–Still active (working quarry; the southern pit is disused)	Chalk
Meredith's Colliery Its 1893 closure of the Upper Four-Feet seam is confirmed independently by two separate NMRS accounts.	Merthyr Tydfil	By 1858–1893	Coal
Merlin Mine Shown to paying visitors as a show cave from at least 1793 -- 'a rather severe show cave', by one modern account -- Merlin Mine is one of the more extensive former lead workings on the slopes of Eyam Dale, its passages linking into the wider Carlswark Cavern cave system.	Derbyshire	By 1793–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Lead
Merrybent Copper Mine The Victorian company mine and Edwardian revival on the Middleton Tyas copper veins, an engine shaft of 1866 and a handful of men to 1925 for less than three thousand tons in fifty years.	North Yorkshire	c. 1856; Engine Shaft 1866; reopened 1910–Not worked after 1925; abandoned 1930	Copper, Lead
Merrylees Drift Mine Two wartime drifts driven into a shallow basin, notorious afterwards for the damage its workings did to houses in Barlestone and Newbold Verdon.	Leicestershire	1942 (coal from 1943)–Early 1970s	Coal
Merstham Chalk Mines Worked for perhaps a thousand years and used to build Windsor Castle and Old St Paul's, these mines were also where Alfred Nobel chose to give a public demonstration of dynamite in 1868.	Surrey	Worked from at least the 7th-8th centuries–Last underground working closed 1961	Chalk
Merthyr Dare Colliery Most collieries that get demolished stay demolished -- Merthyr Dare was pulled down, then someone came back a few years later and built a new winder house on the same spot anyway.	Rhondda Cynon Taf	before 1851–1948	Coal
Merthyr Vale Colliery Once the South Wales Coalfield's biggest pit; its waste tip was the source of the 1966 Aberfan disaster	Rhondda Cynon Taf	1869 (sinking); 1875 (production)–1989	Coal
Michael Colliery Closed after a 1967 underground fire killed nine miners, one of Fife's worst mining disasters	Fife	1892 (sunk); 1898 (production)–1967	Coal
Mickley Colliery The senior partner of the pair: Mickley employed 640 men in 1894 to Prudhoe’s 385, and gave its name to the company that ran both.	Northumberland	By 1855–After 1935	Coal
Middle Duffryn Colliery Three disasters in eight years: thirteen dead in 1850, sixty-four in 1852, three in a falling bucket in 1858.	Rhondda Cynon Taf	1843–Late 1880s; pumping and ventilation to at least 1896	Coal
Middleton Tyas Copper Mine For a mine that barely lasted a generation at full intensity, Middleton Tyas left an outsized reputation: its copper was rated among the highest-grade ore found anywhere in Europe, a rare distinction for so small and short-lived an English deposit.	North Yorkshire	worked sporadically from the 15th century; main phase mid-18th century–mid-18th century (exact date unrecorded)	Copper
Middridge Colliery The pit village at Eden outlived its pit by sixty years and was demolished with the people still in it.	County Durham	Sinking began 1872–1914	Coal
Midland Quarry A Tuttle Hill road-stone quarry run by four generations of the Ensor family, now a flooded void kept as open water in the middle of a Nuneaton housing estate.	Warwickshire	1876–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Diorite, Sandstone
Milfraen Colliery A colliery on the open mountain above Blaenavon that lost five men from a cage in 1902 and nine to a coal cutter's spark in 1929, and closed four years after the second.	Torfaen	1843; new shaft 1865–1933	Coal
Millclose Mine England's most productive lead mine, finally defeated by catastrophic underground flooding	Derbyshire	17th century–1940	Lead, Zinc
Milldam Mine Reopened in 1985 to mine what the lead miners of a century earlier had thrown on the spoil heap.	Derbyshire	Lead mining to 1885; reopened for fluorspar in 1985–Production ceased October 2023; on care and maintenance	Lead, Zinc, Barite, Fluorspar
Milnwood Colliery A Mossend pit owned in the 1870s by John Christie — a coalmaster whose money paid for a Perthshire estate and sent his daughter round the world.	North Lanarkshire	By 1865–By 1925	Coal
Milwr Tunnel A single drainage tunnel grew, over sixty years, into more than sixty miles of connected passages — and when it accidentally broke into a flooded cavern in 1917, a holy well several miles away ran dry	Flintshire	Begun July 1897; driven in stages to 1957–Lead mining ended 1977; maintenance work ceased 1987	Lead, Zinc
Minera Lead Mines A major North Wales lead-mining centre, now restored as a country park with a working beam engine house	Wrexham	13th century (documented); revived 1845 under John Taylor & Sons–1914	Lead, Zinc
Minllyn Slate Quarry Four companies went bankrupt on it in fifty years, and it was still called the Carlyle Quarry long after the Carlyle company had gone.	Gwynedd	Before 1793–1925	Slate
Minnie Pit Named for the owner's daughter who cut the first sod, and the scene of the North Staffordshire coalfield's worst disaster: 155 dead in 1918, 44 of them boys.	Staffordshire	1881 (sinking from 1883 on one account)–April 1930	Coal
The Moat Pit The world's first known undersea coal mine, a stone tower rising from the Firth of Forth, worked for 35 years before being destroyed by the Great Storm of 1625.	Fife	c. 1590–1625 (destroyed by storm)	Coal
Moel Tryfan Quarry A single rockfall in 1909 dumped 421,000 tons of rock into the pit in one event, permanently changing the quarry's fortunes.	Gwynedd	Leased 1745; significant operations from 1824–1972, after the Safety Inspectorate condemned the working face	Slate
Moelwyn Quarry One of the first two slate quarries in the world known to have used a water turbine (installed 1864), and, remarkably for so remote a site, a quarry that ran basic literacy classes for its workers in the 1860s -- visited, according to Wikipedia's own sourced account, by the sitting Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.	Gwynedd	Prospected from the 1820s–Closed in 1897, having never achieved lasting financial success.	Slate
Moira Collieries Seven pits sunk one after another over half a century around a single blast furnace, all of them owned by one family until 1895 and all named after its titles — with gob fires so frequent they were simply part of the job.	Leicestershire	1804–1990	Coal, Fireclay
Mona Mine Copper sheathing from this mine and its neighbour coppered the entire Royal Navy fleet between 1778 and 1782, at a time when Parys Mountain was briefly the largest copper mine on Earth.	Anglesey	Leased 1764; major working from a rich strike on 2 March 1768–Merged into Mona and Parys Mines Ltd 1899; receiver called in 1921	Copper
Monktonhall Colliery A Midlothian Coalfield colliery, abandoned in 1997.	Midlothian	sinking commenced 1953; opened 1965–April 1997	Coal
Montagu Colliery Two shots fired in the Brockwell seam in 1925 broke into a pit flooded and forgotten since 1848, and 38 men and boys died.	Tyne and Wear	1750–13 November 1959	Coal
Moorfield Colliery An Accrington pit two and a half years old when a gas outburst killed sixty-eight, the youngest aged ten	Lancashire	c. 1881–Closed except for pumping, 21 January 1949	Coal
Moorgreen Colliery Barber Walker's biggest pit and the last in the Eastwood district to close, in 1985; D. H. Lawrence's Minton Pit.	Nottinghamshire	1865 (coal from 1871)–July 1985	Coal
Morallee Fell Mine Returned in 1888 as 'Exploring' — a mine that had a company and a name before it had any ore.	Northumberland	Exploring in 1888–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Lead
Moresby Colliery The Earl of Lonsdale’s Moresby royalty worked from one pit for eighty-two years, closed in 1961 when its seams ran out, and now carries a community woodland over the levelled heap.	Cumbria	1879–1961	Coal
Morfa Colliery Known across the coalfield as the pit of ghosts, and its memorial now stands in the middle of a working steelworks.	Neath Port Talbot	1847 or 1849 (sources differ)–October 1913	Coal
Morfa Du Mine A copper working on Parys Mountain, alongside the Mona and Parys mines.	Anglesey	1874–1904	Copper
Morgan's Colliery Fed the Dowlais Iron Works with coal and iron ore, sharing the Big/Six-Feet and Upper-Four-Feet seams with several neighbouring pits.	Merthyr Tydfil	By 1893–May 1924	Coal
Morlais Colliery The last pit in the coalfield to wind by steam, working coal out under the Loughor estuary until 1981.	Carmarthenshire	1882–1981	Coal
Morley Main Colliery After the 1872 explosion, pipes and matches were found in the pockets of the dead.	West Yorkshire	Mid-1850s–1909	Coal
Mosley Common Colliery Rebuilt as a £7.5 million NCB 'superpit' employing 3,000 — and closed six years later with its coal still in the ground.	Greater Manchester	1868–1968	Coal
Moss Rake Hosted the earliest documented use of mine ventilation anywhere in the Derbyshire lead orefield, in 1694.	Derbyshire	Worked by at least 1617 for lead–Early 1970s, after the death of Jack Eidson	Lead, Calcite
Mossfield Colliery Its eight-foot Cockshead seam could set itself alight, and did so fatally twice, in 1889 and 1940.	Staffordshire	By 1889–1963	Coal
Mostyn Colliery Six hundred years of coal ended in a week in July 1884, when the estuary broke in and pumping proved useless — the water was coming from the sea.	Flintshire	13th century–1884	Coal
Moulds Side Mine Stodart Hush, one of the finest examples of its kind in the North Pennines, is a man-made gorge 40 metres wide with cliffs 40 metres high on either side -- created entirely by miners releasing dammed water to strip away soil and reveal the lead vein beneath.	North Yorkshire	Lead mining in the area recorded from at least 1285–Smelting continued at the site's CB Mill from 1822 onward	Lead
Mount Pleasant Lead Mines Its mine shafts cut directly through medieval cultivation terraces -- an unusually direct, physical collision between the valley's farming and mining pasts.	Derbyshire	Worked using natural caverns; sough begun 1767–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Lead
Mount Wellington Mine Mount Wellington's water problem was so severe that the mine ultimately proved more useful helping drain its neighbour Wheal Jane than as a producer in its own right — an unusual case of a mine's second act eclipsing its first.	Cornwall	1976–1978 (initial closure)	Tin
Mountsorrel Quarry A rock face barely metres from Mountsorrel's still-thriving industrial quarry is fenced off and left entirely alone — because Castle Hill's asphaltite is rare and significant enough to have been drawn on for international research into how life on Earth actually began.	Leicestershire	from Roman; commercial quarrying from the 1750s	Granite
Mowbray Mine Prized today not for its iron but for the mineral specimens it left behind -- its baryte and fluorite crystals are held in museum and university collections on both sides of the Atlantic.	Cumbria	A borehole on the Mowbray Estate found iron ore in 1842–Closed in the early 20th century	Iron
Muirkirk Collieries The coal and ironstone pits that made an Ayrshire moor worth building an ironworks on in 1787	East Ayrshire	1787–1923 (ironworks); coal working continued in the district	Coal, Ironstone
Muirshiel Barytes Mine A remote Renfrewshire barytes mine worked for around 200 years; once produced a third of the UK's total output	Renfrewshire	mid-18th century–1969	Barite
Mulreesh Lead Mines Islay's lead was worth mining as much for its silver as for the lead itself — at up to 40 ounces of silver per ton of metal, a good haul of ordinary-looking galena from this one Hebridean island could yield a genuinely valuable by-product most British lead mines never saw in anything like the same quantity.	Argyll and Bute	1360 (earliest evidence); worked intermittently to 1872–1900	Lead, Silver
Murton Colliery The winder that had worked the shaft since 1922 was formally listed as a piece of protected heritage in January 1992 — and demolished anyway, just over two years later.	County Durham	Sinking from April 1838; opened April 1843–29 November 1991	Coal
Myers Head Mine A 30-foot waterwheel on eleven stone piers could not keep this mine dry, and it flooded for good when the miners broke into a hidden cavity in the vein.	Cumbria	c. 1866–Late 1870s	Lead, Zinc
Mynachdy (Rhosmynach and Carmel Head Copper Mines) Its 1839 prospectus compared the ground to Parys Mountain, then briefly the largest copper mine in the world — the comparison did not hold up	Anglesey	Gaddair Copper Mining Company from 1839–1926	Copper, Chrysotile
Mynydd Newydd Colliery Its miners cut a chapel out of the coal face in 1845 and held a service in it every Monday morning for sixty years	Swansea	1843–1 July 1955	Coal
Myttonsbeach Mine One of the twelve sites in the Shropshire Mines Trust's field guide to the Stiperstones mines, documented mainly through its 1864 change of ownership rather than any surviving narrative of its own working life.	Shropshire	Working by the early 1860s–No reliable closure date has yet been located.	Lead