Coal mining in the Black Country

Last updated April 01, 2024

Coal mining played an important part in the history of the Black Country area immediately west of Birmingham, England. It was the basis for the area's industrial development in the nineteenth century; without coal there was insufficient power. Commentators spoke of the Black Country as a great coalfield, and of the earth turned inside out by all the mining activity. Most of the mines were not large scale, but small rough and ready pits similar to the Racecourse Colliery exhibit at the Black Country Living Museum. There were as many as five or six hundred small pits like this exploiting the seams of the South Staffordshire coalfield.^[1]

Early history

Coal mining in the area on a small scale dates back to medieval times. Until the seventeenth century coal was commonly extracted from open-workings on outcrops where the coal seam was near to the surface. One of the last places to utilise this method was in Wednesbury. The eighteenth century saw open-cast coal mining replaced by underground pits. Pits of this era had a depth of between 25 and 60 feet; shallow compared to later workings.^[2]

Expansion

The latter half of the eighteenth century saw a large expansion in coal mining. There was increased demand for coal for use in local iron production. Steam-driven machinery, specifically the Newcomen engine was introduced to pump water from the pits, enabling the coal to be worked at greater depths. The ability to transport bulk cargoes of coal was the impetus for the building of the Birmingham Canal Navigations network. The first barge load of coal from Wednesbury was conveyed to Birmingham in 1769. The transportation of coal by canal rather than by road led to a significant reduction in its unit price in Birmingham. In the first half of the nineteenth century the area of coal mining expanded to Halesowen, Kingswinford and Oldswinford and towards West Bromwich.^[3]

Development of a mine

A small pit like the Racecourse Colliery would usually start up in the following way: a few men would get together and rent the mineral rights from whoever owned them; in this area that was often the Earl of Dudley. This gave them the right to mine a few acres of land for whatever minerals lay under the ground, rather like an underground small-holding. In some cases the tenants would be working men, probably miners themselves, who had saved the money from their wages to make this small investment.^[1] Other pits were tenanted by ironmasters who required coal to make coke for iron smelting.^[4] Alternatively, the landowner could mine the coal and appoint an agent or a manager to run the pit.^[1]

The first stage of opening the mine was to dig the shaft. Initially, a small makeshift frame would be used to shift the spoil, but as the shaft grew deeper a proper head frame would be erected, with a winch to raise and lower the bowk. This was eventually replaced by a cage. A sinking winding engine powered by steam would be established in a temporary corrugated iron engine house. The miners digging out the shaft were lowered down in the bowk. The bowk was also used to remove the spoil as it was dug out and the shaft was then lined with brickwork. The spoil from the shaft was emptied into a tipping wagon pushed along on tracks, then tipped off to form the characteristic 'finger' spoil heaps of most small Black Country pits. The rocky waste and clay was known as 'tocky'. Once the shaft was established the sinking engine would either be dismantled and sold on or kept to use in an emergency.^[1]

Working the mine

The predominant coal measure in the Black Country was the ten yard thick seam. Coal was extracted using the Pillar and Stall method with pillars of coal left in place to support the mine roof. Most Black Country pits were naturally ventilated up until the twentieth century.^[4]

Useful Facts

There were two basic wage rates one for thick coal and one for thin coal.
The difference was normally 1/-. This extra shilling was a kind of danger money for the thick coal miners
A daily wage for thick coal miners in 1842 was 2s 4d (2/4). and in 1845 it was 4s (4/-)
By 1873 a daily wage for thick coal was 5/6d
By 1842, Pay for a boy running the gin horse was 2/6 per week
Until the early 1870s a normal day's stint was 12 hours with a 60-minute drink hour. If working six days this would equal a sixty-six-hour week.^[1]

Related Research Articles

The Black Country is an area of England's Midlands. It is mainly urban, covering most of the Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall Metropolitan Boroughs, with the City of Wolverhampton sometimes included. The towns of Dudley and Tipton are generally considered to be the centre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Wales Coalfield</span> Region of Wales rich in coal deposits

The South Wales Coalfield extends across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen. It is rich in coal deposits, especially in the South Wales Valleys.

Dilhorne is an ancient parish and village in Staffordshire, three miles from Cheadle and six miles from Stoke-on-Trent. The village is within the Staffordshire Moorlands area.

Halmer End is a small village in the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, neighbouring the small hamlet of Alsagers Bank and the larger village of Audley.

Wet Earth Colliery was a coal mine located on the Manchester Coalfield, in Clifton, Greater Manchester. The colliery site is now the location of Clifton Country Park. The colliery has a unique place in British coal mining history; apart from being one of the earliest pits in the country, it is the place where engineer James Brindley made water run uphill.

Cefn Coed Colliery Museum is a former coal mine, now operating as a museum. It is located at Crynant near Neath in the South Wales Valleys.

The South Yorkshire Coalfield is so named from its position within Yorkshire. It covers most of South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and a small part of North Yorkshire. The exposed coalfield outcrops in the Pennine foothills and dips under Permian rocks in the east. Its most famous coal seam is the Barnsley Bed. Coal has been mined from shallow seams and outcrops since medieval times and possibly earlier.

Chatterley Whitfield Colliery is a disused coal mine on the outskirts of Chell, Staffordshire in Stoke on Trent, England. It was the largest mine working the North Staffordshire Coalfield and was the first colliery in the UK to produce one million tons of saleable coal in a year.

The Cheadle Coalfield is a coalfield in the United Kingdom. Centred on the town of Cheadle, Staffordshire and its outlying villages it lies to the east of Stoke-on-Trent and the much larger North Staffordshire Coalfield. The area has been mined for many years, with documentary evidence from Croxden Abbey citing coal mining in the 13th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minnie Pit Disaster</span> 1918 coal mining accident in England

The Minnie Pit disaster was a coal mining accident that took place on 12 January 1918 in Halmer End, Staffordshire, in which 155 men and boys died. The disaster, which was caused by an explosion due to firedamp, is the worst ever recorded in the North Staffordshire Coalfield. An official investigation never established what caused the ignition of flammable gases in the pit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lancashire Coalfield</span> Coal mining region in England

The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingleton Coalfield</span> Coalfield in North Yorkshire, England

The Ingleton Coalfield is in North Yorkshire, close to its border with Lancashire in north-west England. Isolated from other coal-producing areas, it is one of the smallest coalfields in Great Britain.

The Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company formed in 1900 owned coal mines on the Lancashire Coalfield south of the railway in Astley and Tyldesley, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. The company became part of Manchester Collieries in 1929 and some of its collieries were nationalised in 1947.

Bridgewater Collieries originated from the coal mines on the Manchester Coalfield in Worsley in the historic county of Lancashire owned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater in the second half of the 18th century. After the Duke's death in 1803 his estate was managed by the Bridgewater Trustees until the 3rd Earl of Ellesmere inherited the estates in 1903. Bridgewater Collieries was formed in 1921 by the 4th Earl. The company merged with other prominent mining companies to form Manchester Collieries in 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forest of Dean Coalfield</span>

The Forest of Dean Coalfield, underlying the Forest of Dean, in west Gloucestershire, is one of the smaller coalfields in the British Isles, although intensive mining during the 19th and 20th centuries has had enormous influence on the landscape, history, culture, and economy of the area.

Bradford Colliery was a coal mine in Bradford, Manchester, England. Although part of the Manchester Coalfield, the seams of the Bradford Coalfield correspond more closely to those of the Oldham Coalfield. The Bradford Coalfield is crossed by a number of fault lines, principally the Bradford Fault, which was reactivated by mining activity in the mid-1960s.

The Racecourse Colliery is an exhibit located at the Black Country Living Museum.

This is a partial glossary of coal mining terminology commonly used in the coalfields of the United Kingdom. Some words were in use throughout the coalfields, some are historic and some are local to the different British coalfields.

The Burnley Coalfield is the most northerly portion of the Lancashire Coalfield. Surrounding Burnley, Nelson, Blackburn and Accrington, it is separated from the larger southern part by an area of Millstone Grit that forms the Rossendale anticline. Occupying a syncline, it stretches from Blackburn past Colne to the Yorkshire border where its eastern flank is the Pennine anticline.

Hapton Valley Colliery was a coal mine on the edge of Hapton near Burnley in Lancashire, England. Its first shafts were sunk in the early 1850s and it had a life of almost 130 years, surviving to be the last deep mine operating on the Burnley Coalfield.

References

1 2 3 4 5 Black Country Living Museum. Coal Mining Notes. Dudley: Black Country Living Museum.
↑ Court, William Henry Bassano (1938). The rise of the Midland industries, 1600-1838 (Second Impression, 1953 ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 92–99.
↑ Court, William Henry Bassano (1938). The rise of the Midland industries, 1600-1838 (Second Impression, 1953 ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 159–169.
1 2 Barnsby, George J. (1980). Social conditions in the Black Country 1800–1900. Wolverhampton: Integrated Publishing Services. pp. 24–53. ISBN 0905679024.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[BCLM-1] 1 2 3 4 5 Black Country Living Museum. Coal Mining Notes. Dudley: Black Country Living Museum.

[2] Court, William Henry Bassano (1938). The rise of the Midland industries, 1600-1838 (Second Impression, 1953 ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 92–99.

[3] Court, William Henry Bassano (1938). The rise of the Midland industries, 1600-1838 (Second Impression, 1953 ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 159–169.

[Barnsby-4] 1 2 Barnsby, George J. (1980). Social conditions in the Black Country 1800–1900. Wolverhampton: Integrated Publishing Services. pp. 24–53. ISBN 0905679024.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]