Open questions: Staffordshire

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 40 such claims on 26 records. All regions.

Amington Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Amington' (catalogue 2058, Ryder (Bel Smithy) And Ironstone, dated 1886); 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)

Birchenwood Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Birchenwood' (catalogue 9910, Ten Feet, dated 1929); 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)

Brereton Colliery

• Writing in 1957 the Victoria County History recorded that much of the coal had been worked out but that production was expected to continue for about fifteen years. The colliery in fact closed in July 1960. (disputed)

Burley Pit

• In 1885 the Burley Pit was part of Apedale Colliery, the property of Messrs Stanier and Company. (disputed)
• The Burley Pit was the principal winding pit of the Podmore Hall Colliery, the business whose downcast shaft was the Minnie Pit. (disputed)

Bycars Colliery

• Bycars and Hamil had both closed by 1888. (disputed)

Cannock Chase No. 4 Pit

• The colliery was owned by the Lichfield Coal Company in 1868. (disputed)

Cannock Chase No. 8 Colliery

• One source gives 1862 as the opening year of Cannock Chase No. 8, rather than the 1868 date already recorded here; kept as an unreconciled alternative rather than overriding the existing, more specific date. (disputed)

Cannock Old Coppice Colliery

• Ownership is recorded two different ways: B. Johnson (1865-70), J. Owen & Co. (1875) and the Coppice Colliery Co. (from 1880); or the Coppice Colliery Co. itself opening the pit new in 1894. Not reconciled here. (disputed)
• Cannock Chase District Council, the site's current owner, gives 1893 as the opening year and 1964 as the closure year -- a third account differing from both ownership chronologies already recorded. (disputed)

Chatterley Whitfield Colliery

• It has been suggested coal was worked here as early as the 14th century by the Cistercian monks of Hulton Abbey, but the first firmly documented activity dates from 1750. (uncertain)
• A September 2022 report on a permission visit describes the Hesketh Heapstead as being at risk of collapse in the near future, and notes that most buildings remain fenced off and inaccessible despite £20,000 of roof repairs to the pithead baths building. (uncertain)

Diglake Colliery

• Wikipedia gives three shafts of 790, 745 and 460 feet, the third formerly part of the adjacent Boyles Hall Colliery. (uncertain)

Ecton Copper Mines

• The Ecton Mine Educational Trust's own history gives the mine's final abandonment as 1889. (disputed)
• Wikipedia gives the mine's final closure as 1891. (disputed)
• The 1788 Boulton & Watt engine house on Ecton Hill is reputed to be the oldest surviving engine house built for winding ore out of a mine anywhere in the world. (uncertain)
• Profits from the Duke of Devonshire's mining at Ecton in the 18th century are said to have helped finance the building of the Crescent at Buxton. (uncertain)
• A June 2024 report describes the Whey Adit (originally Birches Level, later used by a nearby creamery to store whey) as a straight 213-metre passage, rough underfoot with remains of old drainage infrastructure, ending at a flooded section. (uncertain)

Far Green Colliery

• The colliery was known to its workforce as the Big Pit, Far Green; NMRS's account calls it 'also known as the Deep Pit', but Mould's gazetteer records Hanley Deep as a separate, deeper shaft sunk in 1854, so the identification is disputed. (disputed)

Fenton Park Colliery

• The Victoria Colliery, worked jointly with Fenton Park, had ceased work by 1877 and the Fenton Park Colliery itself closed about two years later. (disputed)
• The official list of collieries at work in 1880 returns a Fenton Park Colliery Co. Limited at Longton, and the North Staffordshire Mining Group’s notes give the same company name for that year. (disputed)

Florence Colliery

• Accounts differ. Staffordshire Past Track dates the colliery 1874 to 1990; Jim Worgan describes the Florence section being closed, its shafts filled and its surface structures demolished after Coal Investments took over the Trentham complex, which followed the closure of the combined mine in 1993. (disputed)

Great Wyrley Colliery

• The Great Wyrley Colliery Company was in operation between at least 1872 and 1924 (VCH); the museum dates the colliery 1806 to August 1949 and the mining society's timeline has the Great Wyrley pit closing in 1925. (disputed)

Holditch Colliery

• Staffordshire Past Track dates the colliery 1912–1989; the Wikipedia account says it closed in 1990, three years after the end of the year-long miners’ strike, with many of its miners transferring to Silverdale Colliery. (disputed)

Hollinswood Colliery

• The gazetteer gives Edwards's dates as 1853 to 1912; Wikipedia, following the Encyclopaedia Britannica, gives his birth as 10 April 1852 at Talk-o'-the-Hill. A birth in April 1852 fits the gazetteer's 'aged 9 in 1861'; a birth in 1853 does not. (disputed)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Hollinswood' (catalogue 12169, Four Feet, dated 1937); 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)

Holly Bank Colliery

• The Willenhall History Society states that Essington Wood went into liquidation in 1895 and the Holly Bank Trust Company was set up; the Durham Mining Museum gives 1895 as the colliery's opening. (disputed)
• The Durham Mining Museum lists Holly Bank as producing household and manufacturing coal in 1947, but the brick historian reads the same records as showing no men underground at nationalisation. (disputed)

Jamage Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Jamage' (catalogue 17315, Spoil Tip (Ref.Nos. 15/28/1 & 15/28/2), undated in the catalogue); 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)

Minnie Pit

• Wikipedia gives the pit as opened in 1881; the North Staffordshire Mining Group dates the start of sinking to April 1883, water and quicksand having hampered the work in 1882. (disputed)

Racecourse Colliery, Hanley

• Accounts differ. Staffordshire Past Track dates the colliery 1840 to 1941 and attributes the closure in May 1941 to the ever-present hazard of flooding and later to dwindling reserves. The Victoria County History states that production ceased at the Racecourse Pits about 1937, after which the Deep Pit was the only colliery still working in Hanley. (disputed)

Silverdale Colliery

• A mechanisation programme began in 1950 with £20 million invested: a new mine and two drifts from the surface, each of 4,000 yards, to extract 50 million tonnes in the Keele–Hanchurch area, and a new coal preparation plant. (disputed)
• The colliery was completely rebuilt during the 1970s when three new drifts were sunk to exploit new reserves in the Keele area, after which production increased and the pit mined over one million tonnes annually. (disputed)

Sneyd Colliery

• The Durham Mining Museum's colliery page gives 55 lives lost in the 1942 explosion, the number killed outright; Wikipedia, Healey Hero and the North Staffordshire Mining Group all give 57, including two men who died later in hospital. (disputed)
• Coal winding at Sneyd ended in July 1962 and the remaining men transferred to Wolstanton, to which the workings had been linked underground; published accounts otherwise give the closure only as 'the 1960s' or 'the 1970s'. (uncertain)

Ubberley Colliery

• The museum gives 1855 to 1900; the pit was paying church rates in 1836 and the abandonment catalogue has all seams abandoned prior to 7 September 1904. (disputed)
• C. J. Homer installed a vertical winding engine before 1875 and the refurbished pit became known as New Ubberley. (uncertain)
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Ubberley' (catalogue 13538, Banbury Cockshead Sparrow Butts, undated in the catalogue); 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)

West Cannock Colliery

• A 17 May 1933 House of Commons statement on the previous day's explosion at West Cannock No. 5 gave three men killed and three seriously injured; other records of the same disaster give six dead -- both figures are recorded rather than silently reconciled. (disputed)

Wimblebury Colliery

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Wimblebury' (catalogue WM191, Bass, dated 1957); 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)