Pelsall Hall Colliery

Overview

A South Staffordshire colliery at Pelsall, north of Walsall, worked by Starkey and Morgan and employing about a hundred people. On the morning of 14 November 1872 a man driving a heading ahead of the face broke into old workings, and the water behind them sealed the deep workings off from the shaft within minutes. Twenty-two men and boys were left below and none came out alive. The pit went on working for another twenty years and closed in 1892 with one of the bodies never found.

History

Pelsall Hall was one of the pits of the South Staffordshire coalfield, standing on ground served by the Wyrley and Essington Canal's Daw End branch and worked in the early 1870s by Starkey and Morgan, with Charles Starkey as manager. About a hundred people were employed there. On the morning of Thursday 14 November 1872 the night shift had come up and some of the day men were taking breakfast on the pit bank. A little before nine o'clock a collier named Cash, driving a heading in front of the working face, unexpectedly holed into an old heading. Water came out of it in such volume that within a few minutes it had sealed the deep workings from the shaft and cut off everyone beyond. Cries of 'pull up' came from the shaft, and Starkey's first thought was that the cage had fallen on somebody. When the cage bonnet came into view three men were clinging to it. Ten men who happened to be near the pit bottom escaped by catching the cage just before the inset was closed by water, which rose thirty-five feet in the shaft. The skip was lowered into the water and found men swimming and clinging to whatever they could reach; some were pulled out by the hair. It was lowered again into silence. Twenty-two were still below. Pumping began at once and went on day and night through raw drizzling weather, the crowds and the wet turning the pit bank into black clay mud. The rescuers had chokedamp to contend with as well as water, lying near the floor where the inrush had brought the roof down by washing out the supporting timber; air trows had to be put in to clear it. One man, Ness, inhaled the gas stooping to pick up his cap and had to be brought out, having himself earlier pulled Starkey clear of ground that would have killed him. Fifteen widows and forty-five orphans were left, and a relief fund was raised. The colliery worked on until 1892, and despite repeated searches up to the very end the twenty-second body was never found; the Mining Inspectorate's report would call him only miner 22, unknown and not found.

Geology

The South Staffordshire coalfield, worked here in ground already riddled with older workings. That is the fact that mattered: the coal was shallow and had been got at for generations, so abandoned headings full of water lay unrecorded close to the new faces, and a heading driven a few yards too far could let all of it in at once.

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

Workings

A shaft colliery working deep and shallow ground, with headings driven ahead of the faces. The 1872 inrush shows how the workings were laid out and how narrow the margin was: the water that came out of the old heading needed only a few minutes to seal the deep workings from the shaft, and the shaft inset itself was closed by water standing thirty-five feet up it.

Closure

The colliery closed in 1892, twenty years after the disaster. Searches for the last missing man continued up to the final closure.

What remains

Nothing of the colliery survives above ground. The memorial stands in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels at Pelsall, a short distance from where the pit was, and marks the mass grave of those recovered; its inscription records 'the sudden and disastrous inundation of the Pelsall Hall Colliery on the 14th day of November 1872 whereby 22 miners lost their lives'.

Related mines

• Walsall Wood Colliery — Both were South Staffordshire pits on the same shallow, long-worked coalfield north of Walsall; Pelsall Hall is named on the Walsall Wood record, which is how it came into this archive.

Nearby mines

• Walsall Wood Colliery — 3.0 km E, Staffordshire
• Holly Bank Colliery — 5.2 km W, Staffordshire
• Hay Head Quarry — 5.4 km SE
• Grove Colliery — 5.5 km NE, Staffordshire
• Cannock and Leacroft Colliery — 7.5 km N, Staffordshire

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.

• A collier named Cash, driving a heading in front of the working face on the morning of 14 November 1872, holed unexpectedly into an old heading; the water behind it sealed the deep workings from the shaft within minutes. ¹
• Ten men near the pit bottom got out by catching the cage just before the inset was closed by water, which rose thirty-five feet in the shaft; twenty-two men and boys were left below and none survived. ¹
• Despite repeated searches continuing to the colliery's final closure in 1892 the twenty-second body was never found, and the Mining Inspectorate report referred to him only as miner 22, unknown and not found. ¹
• Fifteen widows and forty-five orphans were left, and a relief fund was raised for them. ¹

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) The Pelsall Hall Colliery disaster of 1872 — Chasewater and Cannock Mining Heritage
2. (observational) Memorial to the Pelsall Hall Colliery mining disaster — Geograph Britain and Ireland
3. (secondary) Pelsall Online: the 1872 mining disaster — Pelsall Online

Record created: 9 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026