Wednesbury Oak Colliery

Overview

Wednesbury Oak at Tipton was the colliery half of an ironworks: Philip Williams and Sons raised coal and ironstone from their own ground to feed the furnaces, forges and mills they built beside it in 1820. It was a Black Country working in the fullest sense, taking the Thick Coal that made the district and the New Mine ironstone under it, and it gave out in stages between 1908 and 1909 as the shallow measures were exhausted.

History

Philip Williams came from an old Shropshire family that moved to the Black Country in 1776, and was in business himself from about 1800. He became a partner in Gibbons, Whitehouse and Williams, who put up their first furnace at Wednesbury in 1814; when the partners left he bought the foundation timbers for a forge and mill from the Government at Woolwich in 1818, and in 1820 built the forges and mills of Wednesbury Oak Ironworks, where 'Mitre Brand' iron was made. The works were extended and modernised in 1847 and again in 1880 for cold-blast pig iron.

The family's holdings spread quickly. From 1829 they founded and ran the Union Furnaces at West Bromwich and acquired the Albion Works and the Union Works at Smethwick, together with Birchills Collieries and Furnaces, Mabbs Bank Colliery and a Bunker's Hill Colliery — by 1846 employing more than five thousand men. Philip Williams died in 1864 and the business stayed in the family. Around 1875 the ironworks were managed by George MacPherson, a partner from about 1890 alongside Philip A., Walter and Joseph W. Williams; at that date it had three blast furnaces, thirty-two puddling furnaces, five mills and forges, and what a contemporary account calls extensive collieries, with saw mills, foundries and fitting, blacksmiths' and boilermakers' shops. Walter Williams was chairman and president of the Mining Association of Great Britain and chairman of the local Mines Drainage Commission, and wrote anonymously in favour of keeping ironworkers' and colliers' children at school before school boards existed.

The colliery itself is returned to the Mines Inspectors from 1894, when it employed 366 people on coal and ironstone, rising to 444 by 1900. After that it is returned pit by pit and the numbers fall away: No. 22 with 64 and No. 6 with 103 in 1905. The 1903 report of W. N. Atkinson, H.M. Inspector of Mines for the Stafford district, records three small firedamp ignitions here in a single year, each burning one man: sinkers cleansing the No. 22 shaft between the Thick Coal and the New Mine insett in January; a rock heading below the Thick Coal in July, where the men had a safety lamp for examinations and did not use it; and a hole driven up from the Heathen Coal at No. 6 in September, where the collier raised his candle to the top of the hole, fired the gas that had gathered there and fell back down the hole. Atkinson notes that the barometer was falling rapidly through all three.

Flying Reed working at No. 22 was discontinued in January 1908, Nos. 23 and 24 stopped in June 1909, and by the 1915 return the colliery was not worked.

Geology

Wednesbury Oak worked the South Staffordshire coalfield, where the Thick Coal — the thirty-foot seam that made the Black Country — lies close to the surface with ironstone measures among and beneath it. The pits returned the Thick, Bottom, Flying Reed, Heathen and New Mine seams, the New Mine being the source of the ironstone as well as coal.

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

Workings

The colliery was worked through several numbered pits returned separately after 1900: No. 6 on the Bottom and Thick coals and ironstone, No. 22 on the Thick and then the Flying Reed, and Nos. 23 and 24 on the Heathen, New Mine and Thick. A No. 14 pit is also named in an 1892 fatality report. Shaft depths are not recorded, though the 1903 inspector's account of sinkers working in the No. 22 shaft places the Thick Coal above the New Mine insett there.

Closure

Flying Reed working at No. 22 was discontinued in January 1908 and Nos. 23 and 24 stopped in June 1909. The 1915 Mines Inspectors' return records the colliery as not worked.

What remains

The colliery site has not been described, and nothing is claimed here about what survives. The name persists locally in the Wednesbury Oak Loop, the surviving arm of Brindley's original Birmingham Canal Navigations main line.

Disasters & major incidents

• Wednesbury Oak Colliery roof fall, 1891
  19 December 1891 · Collapse / Roof Fall · 2 fatalities

  A pikeman and a loader at Wednesbury Oak Colliery, Tipton, were killed on 19 December 1891 when roof bounded by slips fell in the Bottom Coal and knocked out the timber.

  On 19 December 1891 the roof fell in the Bottom Coal at Wednesbury Oak Colliery, Tipton. The ground was cut by slips on all sides; the fall knocked out the timber and killed the pikeman Job Baker, 25, and the loader Henry Reynolds, 23.

• Wednesbury Oak Colliery roof fall, 1900
  10 November 1900 · Collapse / Roof Fall · 3 fatalities

  A fall of roof at the working face in the New Mine coal at Wednesbury Oak Colliery, Tipton, on 10 November 1900 killed two pikemen and a loader.

  On 10 November 1900 the roof fell at a working face in the New Mine coal at Wednesbury Oak Colliery, Tipton, worked by Philip Williams and Sons. Two pikemen, Thomas Bolden, 53, and Jonah Clark, 43, and a loader, Ernest Stokes, 24, were killed.

What's uncertain

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

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Wednesbury Oak' (catalogue 17274, Thick Coal, dated 1877); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ⁴

Recorded claims

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

• Philip Williams and Sons built the forges and mills of Wednesbury Oak Ironworks in 1820, having bought the foundation timbers from the Government at Woolwich in 1818, and made 'Mitre Brand' iron there. ¹
• H.M. Inspector of Mines recorded three separate ignitions of gas at Wednesbury Oak in 1903, on 8 January, 2 July and 10 September, each injuring one man, and noted a rapidly falling barometer at the time of the September ignition and the two that followed it. ²
• No. 22 pit discontinued the Flying Reed in January 1908 and Nos. 23 and 24 stopped in June 1909; the colliery is returned as not worked in 1915. ³
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Wednesbury Oak' (catalogue 17274, Thick Coal, dated 1877); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Ironworks - Tipton — The Wolverhampton History and Heritage Website
2. (primary) 1903 Mines Inspectors Report (Cd 2119), Stafford District: Wednesbury Oak Colliery — W. N. Atkinson, H.M. Inspector of Mines, via the Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) Wednesbury Oak Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
4. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: WEDNESBURY OAK — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026