Open questions: Derbyshire

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 65 such claims on 46 records. All regions.

Alfreton Colliery

• The Buddlepit mine database gives Alfreton as sunk in 1886 and worked from 1895 to 1968, which sits a little oddly against the museum's returns showing 639 people employed in 1894. The likeliest reading is that the two are counting different things — a sinking that began in 1886 and full production from 1895. (uncertain)

B Winning Colliery

• Opened in 1880. (disputed)

Blackwell Colliery

• Sinking started in 1872. (disputed)

Blue John Cavern

• The first documentary reference to Blue John is a 1766 mining lease mentioning 'ye Blue John, Castleton'; a popular tradition crediting Roman lead miners with its discovery is often repeated but is not supported by direct evidence. (disputed)

Bondog Hole Mine

• An account quoted in a 2022 exploration report has the London Lead Company working the mine from at least 1765 to 1774 and selling its Peak District concessions in 1778, with no mining afterwards. (uncertain)

Britain Colliery

• The first shafts, about 125 yards deep, were sunk by the Butterley Company in 1827. (disputed)
• Gabriel Britain worked shallow shafts here from 1827; the Butterley Company took them over and deepened them in 1845-48. (disputed)
• The surviving headframe tower stands over the Western Pit shaft. (disputed)
• The surviving headframe tower stands over the Britain shaft. (disputed)

Cadley Hill Colliery

• The Derbyshire Historic Environment Record states that even after the decline in production in the 1960s, Cadley Hill continued to be a significant employer, with 3,500 men at work and an average production of two million tons of coal in the early 1980s. (uncertain)

Cotmanhay Colliery

• A Cotmanhay Wood colliery two miles north of Ilkeston is listed among pits mostly owned by Barber, Walker. (uncertain)

Cowdale Quarry

• The concrete buttresses supporting the lime kilns were probably built in the 1920s. (disputed)
• Massive concrete buttresses were added in late 1931, after the face of the kiln bank began to fall forward. (disputed)

Crich Limestone Quarries

• Stephenson constructed a metre gauge line — apparently the first metre gauge railway in the world — and superintended the construction himself; it included two tunnels and two self-acting inclines. (uncertain)

Eckington Mine

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Eckington' (catalogue 18210, Deep Soft, dated 2012); 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)

Glapwell Colliery

• The No. 2 shaft was the upcast, 306 yards deep and 14 feet in diameter as sunk, deepened in 1924 to 669 yards and 18 feet; a third shaft was sunk between 1920 and 1934 to about 657 yards. These figures sit slightly awkwardly with the same source's statement that 680 yards had been proved by 1918. (uncertain)

Glebe Mine

• Lead working is recorded as ceasing in 1884 by Mindat and in 1888, when the Eyam Mining Company ceased operations, by the Derbyshire Historic Environment Record. (disputed)

Golconda Mine

• Closure is generally reported as 1953, but a BGS mine-plan catalogue record separately gives 1985 as the plan's abandonment year — the two dates disagree. (disputed)

Grassmoor Colliery

• One account has the colliery remaining in production until at least 1961, working the Tupton, First and Second Piper and Deep Hard seams from the mid 1950s. (uncertain)

Hartington Colliery

• The New Hollingwood Deep Winning was sunk in 1858, a single 12-foot shaft 218 yards to the Deep Soft divided by a wooden brattice into downcast and upcast halves with an underground ventilating furnace. (disputed)
• A list of the Staveley collieries dates New Hollingwood, or Hartington Silkstone, to 1855, and notes that housing was built on the site and later demolished. (disputed)

Hazard Mine

• The Historic Environment Record says the mine was worked to 600 ft, a hundred fathoms, though the engine shaft is only 350 ft deep. Derbyshire Heritage says the shaft had a depth of nearly 700 ft in the 1830s. Peak District Caving records the engine shaft as 79 m deep. (disputed)

Holbrook Colliery

• At nationalisation in 1947 Holbrook was the only colliery the company worked, and it passed to the National Coal Board. (disputed)

Holmewood Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives the sinking as started in 1870. (disputed)
• The colliery closed in 1968, after which the area was opencast; one local account gives the closure as 1966. (disputed)

Hopping Pipe Mine

• Mine explorers recall fluorspar being worked here through the 1940s and 1950s, trammed out of the mine and loaded by hand into small lorries for processing elsewhere in Derbyshire. (uncertain)

Ireland Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum and a 1967 NCB leaflet give the sinking as 1858, which is the date of the New Hollingwood Deep Winning rather than of the Ireland shaft. (disputed)
• The colliery closed as an independent pit in 1986, when it is said to have been absorbed into the Markham complex as Markham No. 5. (uncertain)

Kirkmeadow Mine

• The shaft's own name is not confirmed by documentary evidence; it is known locally from the field enclosure it sits within, Kirkmeadow, and references to a 'Kirkmeadow Shaft' describe one housing an engine in the 1700s. (uncertain)

Ladywash Mine

• A 2024 exploration report states that management informed the workforce in February 1979 that Ladywash was to close, citing falling world fluorspar prices alongside rising costs 'in light of recent fatalities which led to the need for increased investment in health and safety' — no further detail on these fatalities (names, dates or number) is recorded. (uncertain)

Magpie Mine

• Most accounts give final closure as 1958; one source instead gives 1954 for the end of the post-war Waihi Investment and Development Company operation. (disputed)
• Magpie Mine produced 800 tons of lead in 1827, a site record that reportedly stood unbroken until 1871. (uncertain)
• A 2018 report on the surface remains notes that Magpie Mine's sough still discharges an estimated four to six million gallons of water a day, and that water is visible roughly 528 feet down the main shaft. (uncertain)

Mandale Mine

• A July 2016 report notes that Mandale Mine's main underground entrances were locked at the time of the visit, limiting exploration to the surface remains including the engine house, sough and Bateman's House. (uncertain)
• A visit in June 2026 found the incline level dry, with good headroom, open passages and visible mineralisation; the aqueduct level narrow, showing older stoping, and obstructed by fallen timber and boulders; and the sough dry on the day and lined with fine stonework, though a collapse stops progress a short way in. On the surface the engine house, the water course that served the waterwheel and a stone bath-like feature were all still standing. (uncertain)
• The surviving accessible workings run to roughly 400 metres, reached through four separate level entrances — Incline, Aqueduct, Upper and Sough — with the Forefield Shaft sealed. The sough lining beyond the foot of that shaft is badly collapsed, and parts of the mine hold unstable boulder ground and fluctuating water levels. (uncertain)

Mapperley Colliery

• The museum's page heads the colliery 'Duckmanton, nr Chesterfield' and carries a Markham description, but its grid reference SK423433 and every other source place it at Mapperley near Ilkeston. (disputed)

Milldam Mine

• Milldam was the last working fluorspar mine in Derbyshire. (uncertain)

Netherseal Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Netherseal' (catalogue 14339, Stockings, dated 1947); 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)

Odin Mine

• Sources disagree on the earliest documentary reference. Wikipedia gives 1280, when a poacher, John of Bellhag, was tried for hunting at Bactor Wood and at the entrance to Odin Mine; the National Trust's own monument record instead gives 1260, describing it as the oldest record of a named mine in Derbyshire. Both agree the mine is the earliest documented in the county. (disputed)
• Much of the old mine is unstable underground: a collapse in 2011 left a hole some 15 m deep in the floor of the main passage, the entrance passages are slippery with black shale mud, and the caving community regards parts of the system as beyond safe reach. (uncertain)

Parkhouse Colliery

• NMRS says the pit opened in May 1874 and that 1882 was its first explosion. (disputed)

Pinxton Colliery

• Opened in 1938. (disputed)
• The Low Main seam at Pinxton No. 3 was abandoned in 1905. (uncertain)

Prospect Lead Mine

• The Alport Mining Company used a nearby building at Broadmeadow as its office while working Prospect Mine, its last mine before closure. (uncertain)

Renishaw Park Colliery

• The inspector's report as quoted by NMRS refers to 'the twenty-six lives' lost. (disputed)

Reservoir Colliery

• Reservoir Colliery closed in 1947. (disputed)

Ripley Colliery

• The museum dates the colliery 1846 to October 1949; Wikishire has it worked 1863–1948 and merged with Denby Hall in 1949. (disputed)
• The Mining Remediation Authority catalogue holds abandonment plans titled 'Ripley' (catalogue 4856, Deep Hard and Deep Soft seams, 1905; others for the Blackshale in 1908 and the Ell in 1891 and 1912); none is dated to the colliery's 1949 closure, and the catalogue gives no location, so they may include other Ripley pits. (uncertain)

Seedlow Lead Mine

• A detailed account of the mine's working between 1764 and 1771 was published by Robert Thornhill in the Peak District Mines Historical Society's own journal in 1962. (uncertain)

Seymour Colliery

• Sinking began in 1855 and the colliery went into production in 1858. The Durham Mining Museum gives the opening as 1873, which the Derbyshire Times report of the 1918 closure contradicts: it describes a pit sunk 'some fifty years ago' with 'a remarkably good working life' behind it. (disputed)

Slaley Sough

• The sough's 1850s extension was funded by investors drawn in by the speculative mining boom following the mid-1850s Limited Liability Acts; ventures at Bonsall in this period were 'blindly optimistic' rather than fraudulent, unlike some contemporary schemes at Matlock. (uncertain)

South Normanton Colliery

• The colliery closed in 1952. (disputed)
• The Winterbank pit closed in 1957. (disputed)

Speedwell Colliery, Staveley

• The colliery was working in 1880 but appears not to have been by 1896, superseded by Ireland Colliery on the same site. (disputed)
• Around the turn of the century the workings of Speedwell, Seymour and Campbell were nearing exhaustion as mining moved to the Hartington and Ireland areas and the Markham sinkings. (disputed)

Swanwick Colliery

• The New shaft was 393 yards (359 metres) deep. (disputed)
• The second shaft, of 1916, was 430 yards deep. (disputed)

Tunstead Quarry

• Buxton Lime Firms was formed in 1891 following the amalgamation of 14 lime and limestone companies operating in the Buxton area. (disputed)
• Thirteen firms combined in 1891 to form Buxton Lime Firms Ltd, whose main occupation was to supply chemical-grade lime to Brunner-Mond's Solvay soda plant in Northwich. (disputed)

West Hallam Colliery

• The Derbyshire Historic Environment Record says all coal mining on the site had ceased by 1930 and the shafts were sealed in 1941, while mining references have the colliery in production from 1893 to 1933 and still listed in 1940 with no men returned either below ground or on the surface. (disputed)

Westthorpe Colliery

• The Derbyshire Times of 5 February 1927 reported that J. and G. Wells built six hundred houses at Killamarsh for its workers. Whether all six hundred were built is uncertain: a recession in colliery and council housebuilding followed the next year. (uncertain)

Williamthorpe Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum gives the sinking as started in 1905, which is the year the shaft was completed rather than begun. (disputed)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Williamthorpe' (catalogue EMST8, Spoil Tips, dated 1979); 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)

Winster Mines

• Lead mining in the Winster area is thought to date back to Roman activity in this part of Derbyshire. (uncertain)