Somerset coalfield

The Somerset coalfield included pits in the north Somerset, England, area where coal was mined from the 15th century until 1973.

It is part of a wider field which covered northern Somerset and southern Gloucestershire in England. It stretched from Cromhall in the north to the Mendip Hills in the south, and from Bath in the east to Nailsea in the west, a total area of about convert|240|sqmi|km2|0|lk=on. [cite web | title=A Brief History of the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield | work=The Mines of the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield | url=http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/mhn/coal_text.htm | accessdate=2006-11-11] Most of the pits in the Somerset coalfield were concentrated along the Cam Brook, Wellow Brook and Nettlebridge Valleys and in the areas around Radstock and Farrington Gurney. The pits were often grouped geographically with clusters of pits which were close together working the same coal seams and often under the same ownership. Many also shared the same trackways and tramways which took the coal to the Somerset Coal Canal or railways for distribution.

Many of the early pits were bell pits, however these were replaced as deeper seams were mined, with the deepest shaft being the Strap mine at Nettlebridge reaching convert|1838|ft|m|0|lk=on. Many of the mines flooded and there were also coal dust explosions, both of which required improved ventilation and equipment. Many of the pits closed in the 19th century as the available coal was worked out. Those that survived until 1947 became part of the National Coal Board, however the expense of improving equipment and working conditions meant that even these became uneconomic and the last pit closed in 1973. There is still some evidence of some of the mine workings with the remains of buildings, spoil heaps and tramways around the area.

History

It is believed that coal was mined in the area during Roman times and there is documentary evidence of coal being dug on the Mendips in 1305 [cite book |last=Coysh |first=A.W. |authorlink= |coauthors= E.J. Mason & V. Waite |title=The Mendips |year=1977 |publisher=Robert Hale Ltd |location=London |isbn=0709164262 ] cite book|last=Collier|first=Peter|title=Colliers Way: The Somerset Coalfield|publisher=Ex Libris Press|date=1986|isbn=978-0948578052] and at Kilmersdon in 1437. By the time of Henry VIII there were coal pits at Clutton, High Littleton and Stratton-on-the-Fosse.

During the early part of the 17th century coal was largely obtained by excavating the outcrops or driving an incline, which involved following the seam into the ground. Only a small amount of coal could be obtained by these methods and so bell pits took their place. These were vertical pits, about 4 feet (1.2 m) in diameter at the top and as much as 60 feet (18.3 m) deep, which were widened out at the bottom. When all the coal that could safely be extracted from a bell pit had been recovered, another pit would be sunk close by to intersect the seam and the waste from the second pit thrown into the first pit. [cite web | title=Mining | work= High Littleton & HallatrowHistory and Parish Records | url=http://www.highlittletonhistory.org.uk/mining.html | accessdate=2006-11-12]

At the beggining of the 19th century there were about 4000 people employed in the coalfield. The industrial uses of coal were varied. Coal was used in limekilns to produce lime, which was much in demand for mortar production for building purposes and by farmers to improve soil. From 1820 it was used to produce gas for town lighting and to drive the woollen mills in the area. Coke uses included drying malt in the brewing industry! [cite web | title= Coal Mining | work=Somerset Ramblers | url=http://uk.geocities.com/[e-mail]/MAJOR/localinfo2.htm | accessdate=2006-11-12]

Geology

Much of the exploratory survey work was carried out by William Smith, who became known as the "Father of English Geology", building on earlier work in the same area by John Strachey. [cite web|url=http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/geoscientist/features/page1017.html|title= Smith's other debt|work=Geoscientist 17.7 July 2007|publisher=The Geological Society|accessdate=2008-08-13] Smith worked at one of the estate's older mines, the Mearns Pit at High Littleton. As he observed the rock layers, or strata, at the pit he realised that they were arranged in a predictable pattern, and that the various strata could always be found in the same relative positions. Additionally, each particular stratum could be identified by the fossils it contained, and the same succession of fossil groups from older to younger rocks could be found in many parts of England. Furthermore, he noticed an easterly dip of the beds of rock- small near the surface (about three degrees) then bigger after the Triassic rocks. This gave Smith a testable hypothesis, which he termed The Principle of Faunal Succession, and he began his search to determine if the relationships between the strata and their characteristics were consistent throughout the country. During subsequent travels, first as a surveyor (appointed by noted engineer John Rennie) for the canal company until 1799 when he was dismissed, and later, he was continually taking samples and mapping the locations of the various strata, and displaying the vertical extent of the strata, and drawing cross-sections and tables of what he saw. This would earn him the name "Strata Smith".

Lower and Middle Coal Measures are found at depths between 500 and 5,000 feet (152-1,525 m). Together the Lower and Middle Coal Measures are 2,000 to 2,500 feet (610-762 m) thick with the Middle Coal Measures averaging about 1,600 feet (488 m) and the Lower Coal Measures about 600 feet (183 m). The Somerset coalfield consists of the northern Pensford and the southern Radstock synclines separated by the east-west trending Farmborough Fault Belt. Only in the southern part of the Radstock Syncline have coals of the Lower and Middle Coal Measures been worked, mainly at the Newbury and Vobster collieries in the southeast and in the New Rock and Moorewood pits to the southwest. Only in the eastern part of Pensford Syncline have coals of the Lower and Middle Coal Measures been worked, at the Globe Pit in the Newton St Loe area in the 19th century. [cite web | title=Somerset Prospect | work=Department of Trade and Industry | url=http://og.dti.gov.uk/upstream/licensing/relinqlics/pedl074report.doc | accessdate=2006-11-11] The Hercynian orogeny caused shock waves in the rock as the Mendip Hills were pushed up forcing the coal measures to break along fractuces or faults. Along the Radstock Slide Fault the distance between the broken ends of a coal seam can be as much as convert|1500|ft|m|0. The complex geology and narrow seams gained the field notoriety and three underground explosions, in 1893, 1895 and 1908 were amongst the first attributable solely to airborne coal dust.cite book |last=Down |first=C.G. |authorlink= |coauthors=A. J. Warrington |title=The history of the Somerset coalfield |year=2005 |publisher=Radstock Museum |location=Radstock |id=ISBN 0-9551684-0-6 ]

Pensford coal basin

The Pensford coal basin lies in the northern area of the Somerset coal field around Bishop Sutton, Pensford, Stanton Drew, Farmborough and Hunstrete.The date for the first pits around Bishop Sutton are uncertain but there was at least one before 1719.cite book|last=Williams|first=W.J.|title=Coal Mining in Bishop Sutton North Somerset c.1799-1929|date=1976] By 1824 a collection of four bell pits were identified in field tithe No 1409, and four shaft pits in field tithe No 1428, but that they were no longer working.

The Old Pit, (gbmappingsmall|ST587597) which was also known as Sutton Top Pit or Upper Sutton Pit was dug before 1799 and owned by Lieutenant Henry Fisher, who sold it in 1821 to Robert Blinman Dowling and several seams of coal were identified and exploited. After Dowling's death the Old Pit was sold to Mr T.T. Hawkes in 1852, but he defaulted on the payments and it was sold in 1853 to William Rees-Mogg (an ancestor of William Rees-Mogg) and his associates.cite book | author = Durham, I. & M.| year = 1991 | title = Chew Magna and the Chew Valley in old photographs | publisher = Redcliffe Press | id =ISBN 1-872971-61-X ] The shaft reached a depth of convert|304|ft|m|0|lk=on,cite book |last=Down |first=C.G. |authorlink= |coauthors=A. J. Warrington |title=The history of the Somerset coalfield |year=2005 |publisher=Radstock Museum |location=Radstock |id=ISBN 0-9551684-0-6 ] but went out of production by 1855, when the "New" Pit which had been sunk in the early 1800s but then closed, was reopened and deepened to exploit deeper seams. The New Pit (gbmappingsmall|ST587597) had two shafts of convert|4|ft|m diameter, one for winding and one for pumping. In 1896 it was owned by F. Spencer, New Rock Colliery,cite web | title=Peak District Mines Historical Society Ltd | url=http://www.tidza.demon.co.uk/pages/1896-68.htm | accessdate=2006-11-12] and in 1908 owned by Jesse Lovell and Sonscite web | title= List of Mines in Great Britain and the Isle of Man, 1908 | work=Coal Mining Resource Centre | url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cmhrc/lom08glos.htm | accessdate=2006-11-12] The pit finally closed in 1929.cite web | title=Colliery lists | work=The Mines of the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield | url=http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/mhn/colliery_lists.htm | accessdate=2006-11-12]

The pits

Timsbury and Camerton

The first of the collieries around Timsbury village was sunk in 1791 and known as Conygre (Conigre in some old spellings) and those at Camerton in 1781.

There is very little landscape evidence remaining of the previous mining activities around Clutton, Temple Cloud, High Littleton and Timsbury. There are a few small batches at Clutton, east of Radford Hill and at Greyfields, High Littleton. [cite web | title= Rural Landscapes - Area 6 Hinton Blewett and Newton St Loe Plateau Lands | work=Bath and North East Somerset Council | url=http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/BathNES/environmentandplanning/planningservices/Landscape/rlarea6.htm | accessdate=2006-12-10]

The pits

The Duchy Mines

The Duchy of Cornwall owned most of the mineral rights around Midsomer Norton and various small pits opened around 1750 to exploit these.

The pits

Norton Hill Collieries

The Norton Hill collieries at Midsomer Norton were owned by the Beauchamp family who owned many of the other collieries and related works on the Somerset coalfield at various times. They were also known as the Beauchamp goldmines as they were the most productive mines in the whole coalfield.

The pits

Nettlebridge Valley

There were many hundreds of small coal workings in the area from Gurney Slade east to Mells including the villages of Holcombe, Coleford and Stratton on the Fosse. These operated from about the 13th century, making them the earliest coal mines known in Somerset, until the early 19th. [cite web | title=Medieval Somerset | work=Somerset County Council | url=http://www.somerset.gov.uk/somerset/cultureheritage/heritage/info/periodsummaries/medievalsomerset/medievalsomersetpage2.cfm | accessdate=2006-12-10]

The pits

Transportation

The coal was transported by the Somerset Coal Canal and later by the Bristol and North Somerset Railway and Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, which were reached from the pits by a series of tramways.

Output

Tonnage increased throughout the nineteenth century, reaching a peak around 1901, when there were 79 separate collieries and annual production was 1,250,000 tons per annum. [cite web | title=Radstock's coal mining history | work=This is Wiltshire | url=http://archive.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/2002/7/17/183194.html | accessdate=2006-11-12]

Decline and closure

The peak years were 1900 to 1920. However the decline soon took hold and the number of pits reduced from 30 at the beginning of the twentieth century to 14 by the mid-thirties, 12 at nationalisation to create British Coal on 1st January 1947, 5 by 1959 and none after 1973. [cite web | title= Coal Mining | work=Somerset Ramblers | url=http://uk.geocities.com/[e-mail]/MAJOR/localinfo2.htm | accessdate=2006-11-12] Narrow seams made production expensive, limiting profit and investment, and a reduced national demand together with competition from more economical coalfields [cite web | title=North Somerset Heritage Trust | url=http://www.northsomersetrailway.com/history.php | accessdate=2006-11-11] led to the closure of the last two pits in the coalfield, Kilmersdon and Writhlington, in September 1973. [cite web | title=A Brief History of the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield | work=The Mines of the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield | url=http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/mhn/coal_text.htm | accessdate=2006-11-11]

Area today

Although there are still the remains of some of the mines, in the form of disused or redeveloped buildings and a few slag heaps, most of which have been removed or landscaped, the area has returned to a largely rural nature between the Mendip Hills and the river Avon in north east Somerset. Many of the towns and villages have some light industry but are often commuter towns for Bath and Bristol. There is still some quarrying for Limestone particularly in the Mendips.

The Colliers Way (NCR24) is a national cycle route which passes many of the landmarks associated with the coal field, [cite web | title=The Colliers Way (NCN24) | work=BANES cycling | url=http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/BathNES/transportandroads/roadsafety/cycling/NCN24-PlacesofInterest.htm | accessdate=2006-11-11] and other local roads and footpaths follow the tramways developed during the coal mining years. [ [http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/osm/?zoom=12&lat=6675352.41824&lon=-260994.81562&layers=B00 OpenStreetMap Cycle
] ] It currently runs from Dundas Aqueduct to Frome via Radstock, [http://www.sustrans.org.uk/webfiles/leaflets/Colliers%20Way%20leaflet.pdf] although it is intended to provide a continuous cycle route to Southampton and Portsmouth.

Radstock museum has a range of exhibits which offer an insight into North Somerset life since the nineteenth century. Many of the exhibits relate to the Somerset coalfield and its geology. Artefacts and memorabilia of the Somerset Coal Canal, Somerset and Dorset and Great Western Railways are also on display.

References

Bibliography

*cite book |last=Allsop |first=Niall |title=The Somersetshire Coal Canal Rediscovered: A Walker's Guide |year=1993 |publisher=Millstream Books | location=Bath |id=ISBN 0-948975-35-0
*cite book |last=Clew |first=Kenneth R |title=The Somersetshire Coal Canal and Railways |year=1970 |publisher=Bran's Head Books |id=ISBN 0-905220-67-6
*cite book |last=Cornwell |first=John |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Collieries of Somerset and Bristol |year=2005 |publisher=Landmark Publishing Ltd |location= |id=ISBN 1-84306-170-8
*cite book |last=Halse |first=Roger |coauthors=Simon Castens | title=The Somersetshire Coal Canal: A Pictorial Journey | year=2000 | publisher=Millstream Books | location=Bath |id=ISBN 0-948975-58-X
*cite book|last=Handley|first=Chris|title=Transport & Industrial Development in the Somerset Coalfield|publisher=Radstock, Midsomer Norton and District Museum Society|location=Radstock|date=2006

Notes

:note label|Grid reference|A|AGrid reference is based on the British national grid reference system, also known as OSGB36, and is the system used by the Ordnance Survey. [cite web | title=Guide to National Grid | work=Ordnance Survey | url=http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/getamap/help.html#gridref | accessdate=2006-09-09]