Last month’s column explored prehistoric mines, and this month I will follow up on the topic by visiting medieval and modern examples that have been examined in past issues of CA. The range is wide: from Welsh slate to English coal, and from salt in the Midlands to tin in the south-west. For those seeking an overview of this subject, the key starting point is Neil Cossons’ exploration of Britain’s industrial archaeology in CA 216 (March 2008); see also the ‘Odd Socs’ column featuring the National Association of Mining History Organisations in CA 266 (May 2012), as well as the article on mining history in CA 352 (July 2019).
UPLAND ORES
I will begin my journey at the same location as last month: Alderley Edge in Cheshire. The prehistory of this site is fascinating, but so too are its more recent mine workings. Current Archaeology first visited in issue 137 (February 1994), and CA 238 (January 2010), CA 315 (June 2016), and CA 352 (July 2019) returned to follow up on the Alderley Edge Landscape Project. There the story might have ended, but Alderley had more secrets to share. CA 390 (September 2022) and 391 (October 2022) recounted the discovery of a time capsule – a 19th-century cobalt mine – by the Derbyshire Caving Club. The club had long been exploring the Edge’s many shafts and tunnels, which usually are either filled with collapsed rubble and rain-washed sand or emptied of anything of interest, but they happened on a 10m-long (30ft) section that had somehow survived unscathed, with wood and metal tools, equipment, and mining infrastructure in situ – a remarkable survival that further reinforces Alderley’s special place in British mining history.
Forty miles (60km) south-east of Alderley is my next site, found amid the mining landscape of the Peak District. CA 239 (February 2010) visited High Rake lead mine near Great Hucklow, 10 miles (16km) north-east of Buxton – the unusual survival of a site-type that once littered these hills and which was explored by the Peak District Mines Historical Society. Mining in the area can be traced back to the Roman period, with output hitting its height in the 17th and 18th centuries; High Rake mine was a late addition, opening in 1834 and closing in 1853. Over a period of eight years, the Society undertook a full excavation there, a rare piece of historical archaeology at an even rarer site- type (for more on the archaeology of the Peak District’s industrial heritage see CA 356, November 2019). Next, 60 miles (100km) further south, is the lead-mining landscape of Sutton Coldfield, on the north-east edge of Birmingham. CA 292 (July 2014) featured the work of the Goodluck Mine Preservation Club at a site with a much longer history than that of High Rake. Goodluck Mine opened in 1830 and closed in 1952, before being reopened to the public (after shifting 30 tons of rock) in the 1970s, offering an exceptional chance to visit underground workings (details at the end of the column).
As my research for this column moved to the far south-west, I had a surprise: the lack of detailed exploration of the Cornish tin-mining industry in the magazine. Neil Cossons dives deepest in CA 216 (March 2008), and the work of the Trevithick Society is celebrated in the ‘Odd Socs’ column of CA 413 (August 2024), but that is mostly it for a World Heritage Landscape of international significance. I encourage anyone working there to share their fieldwork with the magazine – it would be great to right this wrong. It would be remiss of me not to celebrate here, too, the miners of neighbouring Devon, especially on Dartmoor, who appear in a feature in CA 260 (November 2011), and another ‘Odd Soc’ on the Dartmoor Tinworking Research Group in CA 311 (February 2016).
ENGLISH COAL
The impact of coal mining on the British landscape cannot be over-emphasised. For centuries it powered our industries, warmed our homes, and fuelled our ships and trains. The decline of the industry in the 1970s and 1980s created long-lasting memories, especially the turmoil of strikes and strike-breaking, but scarcely 40 years later most of these sites are gone, from the mines and their associated infrastructure to the great power stations with their cooling towers that long-dominated our landscapes. While Current Archaeology has featured few coal mines in its history, those that do appear provide a taste of the geographic and chronological range of such sites. CA 155 (December 1997), for example, visited Wallsend coal mine in Tyne and Wear, where visitors can experience a unique conjunction of heritage assets: a site celebrating the eastern terminus of Hadrian’s Wall alongside the remains of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century coal mines. As a modern-day industrial community, Wallsend can trace its origins back to 1778, when the first coal mine opened there, from which fragments of the original steam boilers that powered its hoists survive alongside Roman masonry.
Two hundred miles (320km) south, Current Archaeology’s next coverage of coal mining comes from Coleorton in Leicestershire, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch. CA 134 (May 1993) reported from one of the most remarkable survivals of mining history in the country: a medieval mine found amid its modern-day successor. The geology there favours the miners, with coal seams rising to the surface, meaning that, to this day, coal can be picked up from the fields. It was known that its mines dated back centuries, but the site’s history became clearer in the 1980s, when the decision was made to work out the seam through open-cast extraction. As they dug down, the miners hit a rare survival of medieval ‘pillar and stall’ workings (where pillars of coal were left to support the roof and small ‘stalls’ of coal were dug out – the standard approach before mining technology advanced in the 17th and 18th centuries). Finds included numerous timber pit-props, which were radiocarbon dated and provided a tight sequence between 1450 and 1463, making the site a century older than any previously known medieval mine. Also recovered was a 16th-century tunic examined in CA 384 (March 2022), originally a higher-status garment of 12 sewn woollen panels that had been passed down second-, third-, or even fourth-hand before it ended up abandoned by a miner in the tunnels. Other early coal mines then feature in CA 362 (May 2020), which explored the Forest of Dean, including a surviving example in the industrial centre of Coleford at Hopewell (again, open to the public – see below).
WELSH COAL AND SLATE
Moving further west again, this time into Wales, CA 234 (September 2009) and CA 319 (October 2016) reported on the coal mines and ironworks of Gwent, including Blaenau Gwent around Ebbw Vale, where the ‘Green Mines’ project of this period mixed economic and environmental regeneration with a new understanding of its 200-year industrial history. To conclude this column, though, I will head further north into Wales, where two key articles have featured slate mines and associated industries. CA 306 (September 2015) visited Eryri/Snowdonia to examine this landscape at the time of the campaign to make it a World Heritage Site, an objective that was achieved in 2021. CA 358 (January 2020) then put this landscape in its wider context in a review of maritime Wales’ industrial heritage – the shipment of slate, coal, iron, and copper.
Several sites mentioned above are open to the public, including Alderley Edge (www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/cheshire-greater-manchester/alderley-edge-and-cheshire-countryside), the Peak District Mining Museum (https://peakdistrictleadminingmuseum.co.uk), Goodluck Mine (www.goodluckmine.org), Coleorton (www.coleortonheritage.org.uk/index.html), Hopewell Colliery (https://hopewellcolliery.com), the Big Pit National Coal Museum (https://museum.wales/bigpit), Ebbw Vale Works Museum (http://evwat.co.uk), and the National Slate Museum (https://museum.wales/slate).
