Mines

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48 mines beginning with O, of 3568.

Mine	Region	Worked	Commodities
Oak Colliery, Hollinwood Three drifts driven through the Chamber fault in 1911 to reach a seam that, on the colliery's own side of the fault, would have been up in the air above the pit head.	Greater Manchester	c. 1848–1956	Coal
Oakbank No. 1 and 2 Pits A Victorian shale pit whose pumping engine was christened 'Maggie' with champagne, and whose railway had to be fought through a mansion's tennis court.	West Lothian	c. 1865–1909	Oil Shale
Oakdale Colliery A Sirhowy Valley colliery sunk from 1907, employing over 2,000 men at its 1938 peak.	Caerphilly	From 1907 (sinking)–August 1989	Coal
Oakeley Quarry For every finished ton of slate Oakeley ever sold, its miners had to remove nine tons of waste rock — over the mine's lifetime, more than 100 million tons of it, enough to bury the mine's own original village beneath a single spoil tip.	Gwynedd	1818–1969 (underground)	Slate
Oakenshaw Colliery A Straker & Love colliery-village pit near Brancepeth, sunk in 1855, whose coal went by incline to the Brancepeth coke ovens.	County Durham	1855–1892	Coal
Oakerdykes Pit A three-man family pit that was too small to nationalise, lit by carbide lamps and said to be the only gas-free mine in Scotland, which kept going until 1978.	Falkirk	1936–August 1978	Coal
Oakfield Colliery One of the Fife Coal Company's short-term wartime drift mines, open for only five years.	Fife	1944–1949	Coal
Oakley Colliery A village built for an ironworks in 1846, surrounded by hybrid coal-and-ironstone pits, in the field that was Fife's principal source of iron.	Fife	from 1893 (production)	Coal, Ironstone
Oaks Colliery Oaks Colliery's 1866 disaster killed so many rescuers alongside the original victims — 23 volunteers from neighbouring pits died in the second explosion trying to save survivors — that for decades afterwards it stood as a stark warning about the dangers of underground rescue itself, not just of mining.	South Yorkshire	Early 1830s–From 1929	Coal
Oakthorpe Colliery The colliery that kept the Newcomen engine now preserved at Dartmouth working for nearly ninety years, and whose old seam smouldered under the village in 1985.	Leicestershire	1787–October 1885	Coal
Oakwell Colliery An Ilkeston pit of 1872 with over 700 men by 1910, closed within a few years, whose brickworks carried on until 1966.	Derbyshire	1872–1910	Coal
Oakwellgate Colliery A Gateshead town-centre pit greeted with church bells in 1842 and drowned sixteen years later.	Tyne and Wear	1842–1858	Coal
Oakwood Colliery Davis's Pit in Maesteg, where all eleven men of the night shift died in an 1872 explosion, and whose coal later fuelled Elder Dempster's ships.	Bridgend	1864 (1868 by another account)–1928 (1929-30 by another account)	Coal
Oakwood Colliery (Pontrhydyfen) Sixty slants above Pontrhydyfen, from the copper company's ironstone levels of 1848 to the drift where a shot killed four men in 1920.	Neath Port Talbot	c. 1848–1927	Coal, Iron
Oatfield Mine A Crowan copper mine of the 1840s at the eastern end of the Crenver and Wheal Abraham lodes, absorbed into that mine about 1864 and still marked by two open shafts.	Cornwall	By 1825–c. 1864	Copper
Oatlands Colliery The Moresby company's 1880 pit above Distington, which built the village of Pica and whose closing took the railway branch with it.	Cumbria	1880–1932 (last coal)	Coal, Fireclay
Odin Mine Reputedly one of the oldest named lead mines in Derbyshire	Derbyshire	1280 (documented)–1869	Lead, Barite, Fluorspar, Calcite
Ogilvie Colliery Concrete-lined shafts and machine mining from the day it opened in 1923, which was new for Powell Duffryn; a fire in 1971 helped close it.	Caerphilly	1923 (sinking from 1918)–April 1975	Coal
Okeltor Mine Its arsenic refining works are considered among the best-preserved of their date anywhere in the country, the surviving shaft kiln -- used to roast ore in narrow brick-lined shafts -- an especially rare survival.	Cornwall	Around 1845–1887	Copper, Arsenic, Tin
Old Boston Colliery A Haydock pit closed by a shaft fire in 1952 that then spent 37 years training miners.	Merseyside	1868–1952	Coal
Old Bradley Colliery A Bilston pit where a level driven to drain flooded workings came too close beneath them in 1862.	West Midlands	by 1862	Coal
Old Burghclere Lime Quarry A Hampshire chalk quarry whose lime left by rail in sacks, and whose steep warm sides now hold fly orchids and small blue butterflies.	Hampshire	1885–April 1938	Chalk
Old Castle Colliery Llanelli's biggest colliery in the 1840s, begun by General Warde about 1811; six drowned when old Bres workings broke in during 1862.	Carmarthenshire	c. 1811 (Erw pit 1810)–May 1889	Coal
Old Castle Colliery (Tonna) A ten-man level below the Ivy Tower where two colliers died of fumes in 1913 and three rescue parties were overcome.	Neath Port Talbot	from c. 1865	Coal
Old Clough Colliery A Rossendale pit worked for a century without mechanical haulage, reopened in the 1960s through a pithead hidden in a farm barn.	Lancashire	c.1834–1935	Coal
Old Duffryn Colliery Thomas Powell's first Aberdare pit, which sent the first Welsh steam coal to France and lost 28 in 1845.	Rhondda Cynon Taf	1840 (sinking)–1925	Coal
Old Durham Colliery Lord Londonderry's pit beside the Wear just outside Durham, whose hewers struck in 1851 against wedging the coal down instead of blasting it.	County Durham	1849 (sunk 1848)–1883	Coal
Old Etherley Colliery An old Witton Park colliery name revived by a tiny private drift company in the 1950s and worked to 1965.	County Durham	By 1905–after 1965	Coal
Old Gang Mines The peat store built to fuel Old Gang's furnaces ran to 39 bays over some 400 feet — a reminder that a lead mine this size consumed almost as much organised logistics in fuel as it did in ore.	North Yorkshire	18th century–1899-1903	Lead
Old Mills Colliery The last training pit of the Somerset coalfield: once it stopped winding coal its shaft was kept for supplies and for teaching men the job, and its workshops taught the Coal Board’s apprentice electricians until Radstock got a technical college.	Somerset	1860–1966	Coal
Old Pit Radstock Sunk in 1793 this was the founding pit of the once-75-mine Somerset Coalfield whose story is now told at the Radstock Museum.	Somerset	from 1793	Coal
Old Roundwood Colliery Ossett's largest pit, a Victorian sinking that sent its Silkstone Best out by its own railway until 1966.	West Yorkshire	1853–April 1966	Coal
Ollerton Colliery St Paulinus church, built for the model village and billed by its own builders as 'the cathedral of the new coalfield', began life as a commission for Sir Giles Gilbert Scott — later famous for Battersea Power Station and the red telephone box — before he was dismissed from the project.	Nottinghamshire	1923-25 (sinking)–1994-95	Coal
Onllwyn Colliery The drifts closed in the 1960s and the washery kept going until 2023, the last working piece of the anthracite industry in the valley.	Neath Port Talbot	Before 1831–1962 (No. 3)	Coal, Anthracite
Orbiston Colliery A Bellshill pit where three men died of white damp fighting an underground fire in 1893, one trying to save another.	North Lanarkshire	By 1873–1925	Coal, Ironstone
Orgreave Colliery A Rother Vale colliery whose coke fed Scunthorpe's furnaces, and whose site is now an advanced manufacturing park.	South Yorkshire	1851–October 1981	Coal
Ormiston Station Colliery An Ormiston Coal Company pit sunk beside Ormiston station in 1880, whose recorded closure in 1901 is contradicted by plans of 1909 and a workforce of 196 in 1910.	East Lothian	1880–c. 1910	Coal, Fireclay
Ormonde Colliery Pioneered the remotely operated longwall face in 1963, an attempt to take men off the coalface altogether, and closed seven years later.	Derbyshire	1908 (sinking from 1906)–25 September 1970	Coal
Orrell Colliery An Orrell colliery whose deepest pit wound four tubs at once in four-deck cages from 442 yards.	Greater Manchester	c. 1834–30 October 1924	Coal
Ouston Colliery An early edge-rail colliery whose owners lit its offices and houses from their own gas works.	County Durham	By 1807–31 January 1959	Coal
Outwood Colliery A single underground fire brought its own headgear crashing down the shaft it stood over — the colliery never recovered, though the site washed other mines' coal for another 25 years.	Greater Manchester	1840s–1931	Coal
Overtown Colliery A Coltness pit closed so the Coal Board could sink its shafts another 125 metres for coking coal.	North Lanarkshire	1931 (earlier pits by 1862)–January 1968	Coal
Owlacombe Beams A medieval tinners' gorge 1,200 feet long, recorded in 1492, with a Victorian mine sunk on the same lode beside it.	Devon	By 1492–1866	Tin, Copper
Ox Close Colliery An Ossett colliery that took five years to sink and lasted three more, passing through three owners on the way.	West Yorkshire	1873–1881	Coal
Oxclose Colliery A Newcomen engine at work by 1718, one of the first steam engines in the North East.	Tyne and Wear	By 1718–after 1865	Coal
Oxcroft Colliery A Markham-family pit near Clowne that became a drift mine and then a coal-screening plant.	Derbyshire	1901 (sinking)–1974	Coal
Oxenford Colliery One of the last Ormiston pits, given a new shaft by the Coal Board in 1949 and worked for another decade.	East Lothian	1854–January 1959 (some accounts 1962)	Coal
Oxlow Rake Lead Mines A branch called Daisy or Deasy Rake appears on Castleton's 1691 enclosure map, suggesting work here began even before the first named production record of 1709.	Derbyshire	from From 1709	Lead