Open questions: Gloucestershire

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 8 such claims on 6 records. All regions.

Clearwell Caves

• In 1838 the Birmingham ironmaster G. E. Jackson sank the Old Sling ore mine into earlier workings at Clearwell Meend; by the mid-1860s it alone employed close to 100 men. Sources differ on when large-scale iron-ore extraction in the area finally ended — as early as around 1930, as cheap Spanish ore imports undercut the Forest's mines, or as late as shortly after the Second World War. (disputed)
• Sources differ on the exact date and cause of the Mine Law Court's collapse: the Royal Forest of Dean Freeminers Association records its papers as stolen from the Speech House in 1777, while the Victoria County History records them as having simply 'disappeared' from the Speech House in 1775 — after which assemblies of Free Miners grew increasingly infrequent through the 1820s, before the Dean Forest (Mines) Act 1838 placed the custom on a statutory footing. (disputed)

Foxes Bridge Colliery

• Accounts differ on when the northern colliery was begun. The Forest of Dean Local History Society dates the new sinking to 1855, after an original colliery of about 1837 near the Speech House was never completed; the Lightmoor Press history has work starting on the southern site in 1855, the shafts flooding before coal could be won, and the move north made by 1869. (disputed)

Haywood Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Haywood' (catalogue 8656, Under, dated 1926); 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)

Hopewell Colliery

• The freemining right dates to the reign of Edward I and is said to have been granted in recognition of the miners' military service, possibly at the recapture of Berwick-upon-Tweed — an origin that remains traditional rather than documented. (uncertain)

Speedwell Newbridge Colliery

• A Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'New Speedwell No 2 / New Speedwell', in the Coleford High Delf and abandoned on 11 May 1957, may be a later working of this gale; the catalogue entry does not say so. (uncertain)

Whitecliff Ironworks

• The ironworks was built between 1798 and 1801 by a partnership including Teague (named James by one source, Moses by another), Samuel Botham and John Bishton, later joined by William Phillips; flooding (dated to winter 1797-98 by one source, 1799 by the other) destroyed the partly-completed works and forced Botham to withdraw. (disputed)
• David Mushet was brought in by Thomas Halford (in 1810 per the Forest of Dean Local History Society, 1809 per Grace's Guide) to manage the works and take a partnership share, conducting some of his earliest steelmaking experiments there before withdrawing after a few months. (disputed)