Shropshire Coal

Highley Colliery

This county has a number of small coalfields. The Denbighshire coalfield runs into the northern part of the county and has been worked around St Martin’s. There is another outlier near Oswestry.

The main or East Shropshire Coalfield, in the Ironbridge-Telford area, has received particular attention from Dr Ivor Brown whereas the Clee Hills and Wyre Forest (partly in Worcestershire) coalfields have been covered by others. Their work has been published in the Journal of the Shropshire Caving and Mining Club and other mining history societies.^1-3

The most authorative study on the Clee Hill Coalfield remains an unpublished PhD thesis of the late Ken Goodman; more recent work is of variable quality.

There are small outliers of Westphalian strata around Westbury, Pontesbury, Hanwood-Shrewsbury, Wrentnall and Dryton.^4-6

1. Goodman, K. Hammerman’s Hill (Keele University, 1978)
2. Brown, I.J. The Coalbrookdale Coalfield: Catalogue of Mines and Mining Bibliography (Shropshire County Council Libraries, 1968)
3. Brown, I.J. “The Madeley Wood Colliery (Halesfield and Kemberton Pits)” Account No.26, Shropshire Caving & Mining Club, 2007).
4. Pearce, A. (Ed). Mining in Shropshire (Shropshire books 1995)
5. Shaw, M.J. “The Shrewsbury Coalfield” in preparation
6. Brown, I.J. The East Shropshire Coalfields (Stoud: Tempus, 1999)

When the coal industry was nationalised in 1947, there were 14 collieries in Shropshire; now there are none. The last three pits to close were Averley (1969), Highley (1969) & Granvill (1979)

Collieries after Nationalisation in 1947