Speedwell Colliery

Overview

One of the three biggest pits of the old Kingswood coalfield, worked for over two centuries in seams so narrow they could never really compete with the coalfields that replaced Bristol's own — and so completely built over since that almost nothing of it can be seen today.

History

Speedwell was one of a cluster of small coal mines in the Kingswood district of east Bristol, worked from the early 18th century, alongside its close neighbours Deep Pit and Belgium, the three largest of the Kingswood collieries. On 7 June 1851 a steam boiler exploded at George Brain and Co.'s Starve-all pit at St George, scalding eight men to death (see Disasters, below). Ownership passed through a series of companies as the district consolidated: Wethered & Cossham held it by 1875, the Kingswood & Iron Co. by 1880 and the Kingswood & Parkfield Coal Co. by 1885, before Bristol United Collieries acquired Deep Pit, Speedwell, Parkfield and South Pit collieries together in 1900. A goods-only railway connected the Kingswood collieries and the nearby Peckett and Sons locomotive works, known as the Atlas Locomotive Works, to the Midland Railway at Kingswood Junction. Coal extraction at Speedwell continued until the colliery closed in 1936. Speedwell and Deep Pit, their winding shafts about 600 metres apart and their workings connected underground from the 1850s, were worked together as the Kingswood Collieries. Handel Cossham's systematic survey of the northern edge of the Kingswood anticline found seams nobody had known were there, and the deep shafts he sank to reach them carried the inner Bristol pits into the twentieth century; Kingswood employed over 2,000 men in 1914 and was producing from 1,000 yards in 1924. After 1920 Speedwell and Deep Pit were the only collieries left in north Bristol. Winding at Deep Pit had stopped by 1930; East Bristol Collieries gave 350 men notice for Christmas Eve 1932, and although the pit worked on with 310 men, a demand to spend £20,000 on pumping and a wage claim ended it, and on 4 April 1936 the Bristol Evening Post reported the manager, David Sharp, in consultation over closure. Bristol City Council's Know Your Place story map adds the local texture. William Maule's map of St George, made in 1803, shows Tyler's Pit -- which would later become Deep Pit -- and Cottles Engine to the north, the 'fire engines' being steam pumps that drained the deep shafts up to drainage levels running out into the Coombe Brook. The Atlas Engineering Works on Deep Pit Road opened in 1864 and became Peckett and Sons' Atlas Engine Works in 1880; by 1900 it had built over 400 steam engines for the local collieries and brickworks and for export, one 1880 locomotive going to the Barbados Railway Company, and Strachan and Henshaw took the site over in 1904. Council housing arrived as the pits were dying, with several hundred homes built on the Speedwell estate in the 1920s, among them steel-framed experiments at St Helen's Walk and Telford Walk. Deep Pit closed in 1935 and, despite local protests, Speedwell followed in 1936; by then the seams were both deep and narrow, and wages had stayed low since the General Strike of 1926. A compiled account on Wikimapia, drawing on John Cornwell's history of the Kingswood collieries, puts more detail round the same story: Deep Pit went by the name Tylers Pit until 1838 although it had been working from the 1790s and before, the Great Vein series was found in the 1830s and set off an expansion of the district's workings, Handel Cossham took a controlling interest in what was by then the Kingswood & Parkfield Colliery Company in 1879 and began a major programme of modernisation, and production peaked in the 1880s with workings reaching from the River Frome in the north to the Avon in the south. On the same account the Speedwell pits employed 600 men at the end of the 1890s, 482 by 1930 and only 310 at closure, the fall reflecting the cost of working at a distance from pit bottom, reserves limited mainly to the Great Vein, and the margins on local coal against the larger pits of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Parkfield and Brandy Bottom also closed in 1936, leaving Frog Lane at Westerleigh as the last pit of the district until just after nationalisation.

Geology

Speedwell worked the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield's Coal Measures, but its seams were narrow, which made the coal here consistently less profitable to extract than that of the larger, thicker-seamed coalfields of South Wales, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire that increasingly competed with it through the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Kingswood seams themselves were named and measured by the 19th-century surveyors. A 2013 coal mining risk assessment by Ian Greenfield, quoted in the council's story map, lists their depths below the surface at Belgium Pit, Speedwell's neighbour in the same district: the Doxall Seam at 170 feet, the Upper Five Coals at 220, the Rock Vein at 345, the Primrose at 395, the Lyalong at 430, the Kingswood Old Toad at 510, the Trow at 570, the Pig's Cheek at 660, the Red Ash at 730, the Hole Vein at 785, the Lower Five Coals at 885, the Thurfer at 925 and the Kingswood Great Vein at 955 feet, with the Gillers Inn and the Kingswood Little Vein below that.

Geological setting: Anticlines and Synclines (historical documentary reference), Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

Coal, brickmaking clay and associated industries clustered together in Speedwell: as well as the collieries themselves there were coke works and brick and tile factories nearby, with the Peckett and Sons locomotive works forming part of the same small industrial district and sharing its railway connections. Fred Moss's memoir City Pit: Memoirs of a Speedwell Miner, quoted at length in the council's story map, describes how the work was organised underground: the men separated at the pit bottom for the East and North-West districts, and his own district lay beyond a very long incline of between 700 and 800 yards, down which two trainloads of men had to be taken with half an hour between the first and second journeys. At surface a single railway track ran from Speedwell Pit along the lane the miners called the Long Bar -- past a pond kept full by water pumped from the pit, and past the off-licence where the afternoon shift drank before going down -- and coal went either to the coke works at Deep Pit or out on the main line. The slag heaps beside the miners' cottages in Knapps Lane stood two or three times the height of the houses, with a tunnel driven under one of them as a short cut to Deep Pit. The same compiled account lists the shafts that made up the Kingswood Collieries besides Speedwell as downcast and winding at 380 yards and Deep Pit as upcast and winding at 410: Rubens, downcast and winding, 410 yards; Donkham Pit, pumping only; Cottles Engine Pit, downcast and pumping, 290 yards; and the Doxall Shaft, used for winding. It also dates the underground connection between Speedwell and Deep Pit to the 1850s, with improved ventilation introduced at the same time.

Closure

Speedwell closed in 1936, its narrow seams no longer able to compete economically with larger British coalfields.

What remains

The Speedwell area has been almost entirely redeveloped for housing since the colliery's closure, and very little of the mine survives above ground: the slag heaps that local children knew as the Humpty Dumps were levelled in the 1980s to make the playing field off Holly Lodge Road. What does remain is named in Bristol City Council's 2023 story map. A brick bridge abutment on Whitefield Road, which once carried the coal trucks out of Speedwell Pit towards the coke works at Deep Pit and the main line, is described there as the only standing structure directly related to this industrial heritage. The Crofts End Mission hall of 1908, known locally as the Miners' Hall, and the closed Rock Tavern on Deep Pit Road both still stand, along with several of the tracks the miners walked to work.

The bridge abutment on Whitefield Road, the Crofts End Mission hall, the former Rock House Tavern on Deep Pit Road, and several of the miners' footpaths and tracks. Of the colliery itself nothing stands: the shafts, the surface plant and the spoil heaps are all gone, the heaps levelled in the 1980s.

Redevelopment

Redeveloped for housing; the former colliery landscape has been almost entirely erased.

Related mines

• Easton Colliery — Both were brought into Bedminster, Easton, Kingswood and Parkfield Collieries Ltd when the Bristol combine was formed in 1900, and were worked under that single ownership until Easton closed in 1911.
• Hanham Colliery — Both were East Bristol / Bristol United Collieries pits in the 1920s and 1930s; Hanham closed in 1926, Speedwell in 1936, the last two deep mines in north Bristol.
• Parkfield Colliery — Both were Handel Cossham's pits, run together as the Kingswood and Parkfield Collieries from 1879 and closing in the same year, 1936; Parkfield's abandonment then flooded the last deep mine in the district.

Disasters & major incidents

• Kingswood Colliery boiler explosion, 1851
  7 June 1851 · Machinery · 8 fatalities
  On 7 June 1851 the steam boiler at the Starve-all coalpit at St George, worked by George Brain and Co. in the Kingswood coalfield, exploded and scalded eight men to death. Among them were the engineer, John Burchell, and his two sons. The contemporary verdict on Burchell was harsh: had he lived, it was said, he would have been tried for manslaughter, as one of the victims of his own recklessness.

Culture

• City Pit: Memoirs of a Speedwell Miner (Literature)
  The colliery of the memoir's title: Moss was a Speedwell miner, and the Speedwell story map quotes him on its pits and workings.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• Fred Moss's memoir calls the main line the coal was trammed to the Great Western Railway, while Grace's Guide records the Kingswood collieries' goods railway joining the Midland Railway at Kingswood Junction and the story map identifies the line as the one now the Bristol to Bath Cycle Path; which company's metals the Speedwell coal reached first is not settled. (disputed) ^4,5
• Besides Speedwell's own downcast winding shaft of 380 yards and Deep Pit's upcast winding shaft of 410, the Kingswood Collieries worked four other shafts: Rubens, downcast and winding, 410 yards; Donkham Pit, pumping only; Cottles Engine Pit, downcast and pumping, 290 yards; and the Doxall Shaft for winding. (uncertain) ⁶
• The Speedwell pits are given as employing 600 men at the end of the 1890s, 482 by 1930 and 310 at closure in 1936. (uncertain) ⁶
• Deep Pit was known as Tylers Pit until 1838, though it had been working from the 1790s and earlier; the discovery of the Great Vein series in the 1830s set off the expansion of the district's workings. (uncertain) ⁶
• Parkfield and Brandy Bottom closed in the same year as Speedwell, 1936, leaving Frog Lane at Westerleigh as the district's last working pit until shortly after nationalisation. (uncertain) ⁶

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Speedwell was worked from the early 18th century as one of the three largest Kingswood collieries, alongside Deep Pit and Belgium. ¹
• Ownership passed through Wethered & Cossham (1875), the Kingswood & Iron Co. (1880) and the Kingswood & Parkfield Coal Co. (1885) before Bristol United Collieries acquired Deep Pit, Speedwell, Parkfield and South Pit collieries together in 1900. ²
• The coalfield's narrow seams made it consistently less profitable than the larger coalfields of South Wales, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. ¹
• Speedwell closed in 1936. ¹
• The area has been almost entirely redeveloped for housing, with little physical evidence of the colliery surviving. ¹
• Speedwell's shaft was 380 yards deep and Deep Pit's, connected underground about 600 metres away, 410 yards. ³
• East Bristol Collieries announced the possible closure of Kingswood Colliery (Speedwell Pit), employing 333 men, in 1936; the pit closed that year after a demand for £20,000 of pumping expenditure. ^3,4
• Notice was given to 350 men at the Kingswood Collieries to cease work on Christmas Eve 1932, yet the pit worked on until 1936. ⁴
• Deep Pit closed in 1935 and Speedwell followed in 1936 despite local protests, the seams by then being both deep and narrow and wages having stayed low since the General Strike of 1926. ⁵
• A 2013 coal mining risk assessment quoted in Bristol City Council's story map gives the depths of the named Kingswood seams at Belgium Pit, Speedwell's neighbour: from the Doxall Seam at 170 feet down to the Kingswood Great Vein at 955 feet, with the Gillers Inn and Kingswood Little Vein below that. ⁵
• Fred Moss, a Speedwell miner, recorded that the men split at the pit bottom between the East and North-West districts, and that his own district lay beyond an incline of between 700 and 800 yards, taken by two trainloads of men with half an hour between journeys. ⁵
• A brick bridge abutment on Whitefield Road, which carried coal trucks out of Speedwell Pit, is described as the only standing structure directly related to the area's mining heritage; the spoil heaps were levelled in the 1980s to create a playing field. ⁵
• Fred Moss's memoir calls the main line the coal was trammed to the Great Western Railway, while Grace's Guide records the Kingswood collieries' goods railway joining the Midland Railway at Kingswood Junction and the story map identifies the line as the one now the Bristol to Bath Cycle Path; which company's metals the Speedwell coal reached first is not settled. (disputed) ^4,5
• Tyler's Pit, shown with Cottles Engine on William Maule's 1803 map of St George, later became Deep Pit; the 'fire engines' of that landscape were steam pumps lifting water to drainage levels that ran out into the Coombe Brook. ⁵
• Besides Speedwell's own downcast winding shaft of 380 yards and Deep Pit's upcast winding shaft of 410, the Kingswood Collieries worked four other shafts: Rubens, downcast and winding, 410 yards; Donkham Pit, pumping only; Cottles Engine Pit, downcast and pumping, 290 yards; and the Doxall Shaft for winding. (uncertain) ⁶
• The Speedwell pits are given as employing 600 men at the end of the 1890s, 482 by 1930 and 310 at closure in 1936. (uncertain) ⁶
• Deep Pit was known as Tylers Pit until 1838, though it had been working from the 1790s and earlier; the discovery of the Great Vein series in the 1830s set off the expansion of the district's workings. (uncertain) ⁶
• Parkfield and Brandy Bottom closed in the same year as Speedwell, 1936, leaving Frog Lane at Westerleigh as the district's last working pit until shortly after nationalisation. (uncertain) ⁶

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Speedwell, Bristol — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Bedminster, Easton, Kingswood and Parkfield Collieries — Grace's Guide
3. (secondary) King Coal's Final Victim — Regional Historian (John Penny, UWE), Issue 7, Summer 2001
4. (secondary) Kingswood Colliery — Grace's Guide
5. (secondary) The Speedwell Story (Know Your Place story map) — Pete Insole, Bristol City Council (ArcGIS StoryMaps)
6. (secondary) Speedwell Deep Pit (Closed 1936), Bristol — Wikimapia, user-contributed entry compiled by John Gibson from John Cornwell's History of the Kingswood Collieries

Record created: 24 August 2026 · Last researched: 18 September 2026