Mines in Berkshire

Berkshire has no coalfield and no metal, and its extractive history is the quiet kind: chalk, clay, sand and gravel, worked for the things a growing region needs rather than for export. The Chalk of the Berkshire Downs and the outliers north of the Thames was burnt for lime and dug for the chalk that goes into brick clay, often by mining beneath the brickfields themselves, and the Reading district's brickmaking left a scatter of abandoned chalk mines under what are now suburbs.

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Record created: 9 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026