MineArchiveMines
63 mines beginning with R, of 1950.
| Mine | Region | Worked | Commodities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raasay Iron Mine Some 260 German prisoners of war worked this mine from 1916, fenced off from the British and local miners beside them — and islanders' own accounts describe surprisingly little ill-feeling between the two |
Highland | Developed from 1913; production 1914-1919–1919 | Iron |
| Racecourse Colliery, Hanley Three shafts sunk on the old Hanley racecourse, where 30,000 people had watched the Potteries races forty years before. |
Staffordshire | c. 1870–1941 | Coal, Ironstone |
| Rainslow Scrins A geological rarity as much as a mining one: the ten-odd parallel scrins that give the site its name occur in this concentration nowhere else in the country. |
Derbyshire | Working possibly by 1541–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Lead |
| Raisby Hill Quarry Still working after nearly two centuries, and the type locality for the rock formation that carries its name. |
County Durham | By 1896 in the official lists; quarrying here is older–Still working | Limestone |
| Ram Hill Colliery A rope-and-drum accident here in 1855 killed two colliers and prompted a government inspector's blunt condemnation of using a jointed rope to draw men up a shaft. |
Gloucestershire | A dramway serving the site was built in 1828–Closed in 1860 | Coal |
| Rampgill Mine At its early-20th-century peak, one purpose-built mill at one Alston Moor village was processing three-fifths of all the zinc ore raised anywhere in Britain — a striking concentration of a whole country's output into a single remote Pennine dale. |
Cumbria | 1690 (Rampgill Vein discovered)–1949 (Vieille Montagne); some later 20th-century working | Lead, Zinc |
| Ramsley Mine Dartmoor's Sticklepath Fault split the same mineral lodes worked here as at neighbouring Belstone, and the derelict brick flues are still crusted white. |
Devon | Trial working from 1851; main development from 1858–c.1911-12 | Copper |
| Ramsley Moor Lead Smelting Site It isn't a smelting site at all in the usual sense -- it's where the waste slag from a nearby bole fire was broken, washed and resmelted a second time to wring out the lead the first burn had missed. |
Derbyshire | Believed late medieval–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Lead |
| Randolph Colliery A pit that survived a year-long underground fire fed by a neighbouring colliery blaze already two decades old, then worked on for another ninety years. |
Fife | 1850–1968 | Coal |
| Ratgoed Quarry The remotest of the quarries served by the Corris Railway, reached only by its own 1¾-mile horse-worked Ratgoed Tramway -- a line so isolated that it outlived the passenger-carrying Corris Railway itself, still working as a horse-drawn line under British Railways ownership after Corris closed in 1948. |
Gwynedd | Worked as Alltgoed Quarry from before 1844–1946 | Slate |
| Ravenhead Colliery Three quarters of its coal went straight to Pilkington's glassworks next door, and Pilkington bought the locomotives that moved it. |
Merseyside | 1867 (sinking from 1866)–October 1968 | Coal, Fireclay |
| Red Gill Mine Its ore is unusually poor in carbonates, a quirk of chemistry that produced an exceptional suite of oxidised copper-lead minerals -- among them the type specimens of redgillite, first described from this site. |
Cumbria | uncertain; worked mainly during the 19th century–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Lead, Copper |
| Red Rake Mine Almost everyone calls it Red Rake Sough, but it was never a drainage sough at all -- it was built purely to haul ore out, one of the rare Derbyshire mine features that carries its own exact date. |
Derbyshire | Newburgh Level completed 27 October 1851–Reworked for fluorspar, lead and barite in the early 20th century | Lead, Fluorspar |
| Red Scar Mine Because Red Scar was so remote, the company built its workers proper on-site accommodation -- a rare thing for so short-lived and unsuccessful a venture. |
North Yorkshire | 1862–1877 | Lead |
| Redding Colliery One of Scotland's worst mining disasters happened here in 1923 when old flooded workings burst through a fault the colliery's own managers had trusted as a natural barrier. |
Falkirk | No.23 pit's two shafts sunk from 1896–1958 | Coal |
| Redheugh Colliery The last colliery working in Gateshead itself, abandoned in 1927 — and blown open from below two years later, when its sealed shafts exploded without warning. |
Tyne and Wear | 1872–28 May 1927 | Coal |
| Redmoor Mine A working tin mine as early as the 18th century, closed in the 1892 tin-price collapse, and now the subject of a 21st-century critical-minerals exploration project on the same ground. |
Cornwall | 1700–1945 | Tin, Copper, Arsenic, Tungsten, Lead, Silver |
| Reigate Caves Silver sand mines entered through doorways in the wall of Britain's oldest road tunnel |
Surrey | 18th century or earlier; Tunnel Road mines after 1823–early 20th century | Silica Sand |
| Rhas Las Colliery At least three colliers died here in separate roof falls in the early 1850s; the colliery lent its name to the whole district's Nine-Feet (Rhas Las) seam. |
Merthyr Tydfil | By 1856, possibly earlier–By 1871 | Coal |
| Rhigos Colliery An anthracite drift complex above the Vale of Neath where 16 men died in a 1941 gas explosion the coroner concluded had been set off by a miner smoking underground. |
Neath Port Talbot | 1919, as Peacock–February 1965 | Coal |
| Rhiwbach Quarry A remote Blaenau Ffestiniog slate quarry served by its own tramway to the Ffestiniog Railway, and the last Welsh slate quarry where workers lived on site in barracks. |
Gwynedd | Commercial working began around 1812–1952 | Slate |
| Rhondda Mountain Colliery A 15-year-old collier, William Morris, died under a roof fall here in 1876; the mine worked on into the 1930s under several owners. |
Neath Port Talbot | By 1876, possibly c.1860 as Fforch-y-Grawn–1947 (Nationalisation) | Coal |
| Rhoose Quarry The overshadowed neighbour: a Blue Lias quarry and cement works kept as make-up capacity for Aberthaw, which nonetheless pioneered low-heat clinker for a dam. |
Vale of Glamorgan | 1913–1979 (clinker); site cleared after 1992 | Limestone |
| Rhosydd Quarry Rhosydd's workings reach so far underground that they meet the neighbouring Croesor quarry's own tunnels beneath the mountain — exploration reports describe a genuine underground 'through trip' between the two sites, a rare case of two historic Welsh slate mines still physically joined. |
Gwynedd | worked from 1840; Rhosydd Slate Company formed 1853–1930 (final reopening attempt failed 1948) | Slate |
| Rhyd Fach Mine One of the minor lead workings scattered across the Nant-y-Moch valley, in the same mining cluster as the much better documented Eaglebrook and Hafan mines, though no narrative account of its own working history has yet been located. |
Ceredigion | No reliable opening date has yet been located.–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Lead |
| Rhydwain Colliery An early Hirwaun level, documented only by its 1878–82 owner and manager — a genuinely thin record, not a shortcut taken. |
Rhondda Cynon Taf | By 1878–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Coal |
| Rhydycar Colliery A pit sunk to the Gellideg seam for the Plymouth Iron Works Company, its name preserving that of the farm whose freehold traces back through a 1729 divided inheritance. |
Merthyr Tydfil | 19th century–March 1924 | Coal |
| Riddochhill Colliery Seven photographs of its winding engine were taken in 1968, the year it closed; where the engine went afterwards is not recorded. |
West Lothian | 1890–1968; abandoned 1969 | Coal |
| Rigg Head Quarry A workforce of exactly two in 1930 — one man underground, one at the surface — on a hillside that had been quarried for three centuries. |
Cumbria | Working by 1930–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Slate |
| Ripley Colliery Butterley's own-town pit at Ripley, over a thousand strong when the Coal Board closed it in 1949, whose 1857 explosion put the under-viewer in the dock. |
Derbyshire | 1846 (museum); 1854 or 1863 (local histories)–October 1949 | Coal |
| Risca New Pit 120 killed two years after it started raising coal — and, a decade later, the first colliery in South Wales lit by electricity at the pit bottom. |
Caerphilly | 1878–1967 | Coal |
| Risehow Colliery Opened in 1918 as its neighbour Flimby was finishing, and grew to 915 men by 1925 — the West Cumberland pit that outlasted them all. |
Cumbria | 1918–1966 | Coal |
| Rising Sun Colliery In 1935 its coal preparation plant was called probably the most complete in the world; the site is now a country park. |
Tyne and Wear | 1908–26 April 1969 | Coal |
| River Level Colliery, Aberdare Abernant levels opened by the Aberdare Iron Company in the early 1830s, with a fatal explosion reported in 1836. |
Rhondda Cynon Taf | Early 1830s–1940 | Coal |
| Roanhead Iron Mine Controlled by one family, the Kennedys, across three generations of Furness ironmasters. |
Cumbria | Leased 1852–1942, when the last deposit was exhausted | Iron |
| Robbins Colliery Worked in the mid-1800s by the Cyfarthfa Iron Company. |
Merthyr Tydfil | By the 1820s–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Coal |
| Robertsbridge Furnace A Wealden ironworks on the 'sow track' route carrying iron goods toward the coast. |
East Sussex | 1539-41–1793 (furnace) | Iron |
| Robin Hood Colliery J. and J. Charlesworth named their pits after their daughters, and this one was Jane Pit; a brick ventilation shaft by the recreation ground is all that is left of it. |
West Yorkshire | 1854–1960s | Coal |
| Rock Colliery, Blackwood Budd's Rock, a house-coal level and shaft north of Blackwood worked from the early 1800s to 1957. |
Caerphilly | Early 1800s (1878 by another account)–1957 | Coal |
| Rodderup Fell Mine Laid out by John Smeaton in the 1770s, and the only Alston Moor mine ever worked commercially for fluorspar. |
Cumbria | Levels driven from about 1800–Underground lead working ceased 1948 | Lead, Fluorspar |
| Roddymoor Colliery Five seams within 34 fathoms of the surface, feeding the byproduct coke ovens that made 'Pease's West' coke and built the village. |
County Durham | 1844–10 August 1963 | Coal, Witherite, Fireclay |
| Rogerley Mine Rogerley's green fluorite doesn't need an ultraviolet lamp to fluoresce — held up to ordinary daylight, it glows a visible bluish-violet, a property rare enough that it made an obscure 19th-century limestone quarry a destination for mineral collectors worldwide. |
County Durham | from early 1970s | Fluorspar |
| Roman Gravels Mine Its 'Roman' name was added in the 19th century after miners reported Roman tools, coins and a lead ingot in old workings, finds later writers have doubted, one calling the ingot a likely share-promotion story; yet its open cuts are a rare survival, and it was one of fewer than ten Romano-British mine sites evaluated for protection in 1990–91. |
Shropshire | possibly Roman (c. AD 120)–1895 | Lead |
| Rookhope (Boltsburn Mine) The most successful of the Weardale Lead Company's mines, made rich by a chance 1892 discovery, and served by a 3-mile aerial ropeway; its fluorite was pure enough to be sold to Zeiss for optics. |
County Durham | early 19th century–1931 | Lead, Fluorspar |
| Rose Bridge Colliery The deepest coal shaft in the world in 1872 at 2,448 feet, and by 1923 the colliery employed twenty-four people. |
Greater Manchester | 1859–24 July 1941 | Coal |
| Rose Heyworth Colliery It was named for the managing director's wife, and for its last twenty-six years its coal came out of a different hillside altogether. |
Blaenau Gwent | Sunk 1872; first coal 1874–1985 | Coal |
| Rosebank Colliery, Dunfermline Nimmo's six-pit Rosebank Colliery on Dunfermline's eighteenth-century Elgin coal ground, reworked from 1881 and abandoned in 1918. |
Fife | 1881 (earlier pits from the 18th century)–June 1918 | Coal |
| Roseberry Mine The largest of Roseberry Topping's three ironstone mines, once blamed for the 1912 rockfall that gave the hill its lopsided shape -- a verdict modern geology has overturned. |
North Yorkshire | 1870 (worked 1871-87, 1906-26)–1924 (machinery removed by 1931) | Iron |
| Rosebush Slate Quarry A Preseli Hills slate quarry that supplied roofing for the Palace of Westminster and spawned a purpose-built railway and a planned Victorian spa village that never took off. |
Pembrokeshire | 1842–1914 | Slate |
| Rosedale Ironstone Mines A remote moorland ironstone boom that swelled Rosedale's population fivefold, leaving its calcining kilns as landmarks for miles |
North Yorkshire | 1857 (west side); 1859 (east side)–1929 (final closure; briefly reopened 1919-26) | Iron |
| Rosehall Colliery Addie's dozen-pit colliery south of Coatbridge, 1,600 strong in 1910, whose rows reached Orwell and whose 1934 explosion killed five. |
North Lanarkshire | 1855 (deaths recorded from 1853)–September 1940 | Coal, Fireclay, Ironstone |
| Rosemanowes Quarry A Cornish granite quarry that became Europe's first hot dry rock geothermal experiment — it cracked the granite with water alone, but never found rock hot enough to raise steam. |
Cornwall | 19th century–No reliable closure date has yet been located. | Granite |
| Rosevale Mine A small Cornish tin mine at Zennor, now preserved by volunteers as the only underground mine restoration project of its kind in the county. |
Cornwall | Worked as Wheal Chance from the 18th century–Suspended 1914; company wound up by 1925 | Tin |
| Roslin Colliery A Midlothian pit still called The Moat, which grew while its neighbours shrank. |
Midlothian | c. 1876; re-sunk 1901-3–1969 | Coal |
| Rossington Colliery Sinking very nearly failed in its first fortnight, before it had even reached coal — the shaft flooded so fast that work had to stop completely for seven months. |
South Yorkshire | Sinking from 10 July 1912; coal from July 1916–31 March 2006 | Coal |
| Rothes Colliery An entire new town, Glenrothes, was built to serve a mine that operated for barely four years after its royal opening before failing so badly it became a byword for the National Coal Board's overreach in Scotland. |
Fife | 1946 (sinking); 1957 (production)–May 1962 | Coal |
| Roughton Gill Mine Roughton Gill's mineral specimens are prized among collectors today for their striking secondary minerals — including linarite, mimetite and pyromorphite — a colourful legacy of the same rich copper- and lead-bearing ground that first drew German miners to the Caldbeck Fells in the 1560s. |
Cumbria | 12th century (earliest possible); documented from 1564–17th century (main German-era working); reworked later | Copper, Silver, Zinc, Barite, Lead |
| Roundwood Colliery Bought by a Sheffield steelmaker to bankroll the sinking of Silverwood, and joined to it underground. |
South Yorkshire | Early 1860s–Early 1960s | Coal |
| Rubislaw Quarry One of the biggest man-made holes in Europe; gave Aberdeen its nickname as the Granite City |
Aberdeenshire | 1740–1971 | Granite |
| Rufford Colliery A five-ton water barrel plunged 156 yards down its own sinking shaft in 1913 after a stray piece of wood jammed the winding engine's brake and throttle levers, killing fourteen men on a scaffold below in one of Nottinghamshire's worst mining disasters. |
Nottinghamshire | First shafts sunk in 1911.–Closed in 1993. | Coal |
| Rumney Quarry Road stone for Victorian Cardiff, cut from a window of Silurian rock in the middle of the suburbs. |
Cardiff | Opened in the 19th century–Closed in the 1920s | Limestone, Sandstone |
| Ruthwaite Mine Thirty tons of ore in 1911 worth fifteen pounds at the mine, and thirty-one people on the books a decade later — nearly all of them at the surface. |
Cumbria | Exploring in 1910–Returned to 1925; no closure date located | Barite |
| Rutland Ironstone Quarries The largest walking dragline in the world finished here, then walked to Corby — over ten roads, a railway and the River Welland |
Rutland | 1882–1973 (last ore to Corby 1980) | Iron |