The paper summarised in this blog, and another on a different topic that was written around the same time, were originally intended to be sent to journals for publication – after five years of retirement I felt able once again to resume my career long warfare with journal editors and referees. However reading the journal author guides quickly made me change my mind, and I decided simply to mount the papers on this website. This has advantages in that doing so is good for my blood pressure and state of mind, and also allows for immediate dissemination of what has been written, but also disadvantages, in that the papers have not been tested by peer review and, as I am possibly the world’s worst proof reader, no doubt have significant numbers of typographical errors. Readers will come to their own views as to whether my approach has been the correct one.

Outline

Figure 1. The 1822 Fowler Map

In 1822, the landowners of Kingswinford parish commissioned a map by the firm of William Fowler, a Birmingham firm of land surveyors, that delineated all the properties in the parish, and provided information in a book of reference. This produced a large map at a scale of 1:7920 that is almost a work of art in its own right (figure 1). Note that the map is oriented such that north is in the top right hand corner. The exercise was repeated, probably driven by the Tithe Act of 1835, in 1840. This post links to a technical and analytical paper that investigates what these maps can tell us about the development of the parish over the period between 1822 and 1840 and summarises the findings. Full details are of course given in the paper itself.

The basic approach taken was firstly to transcribe all the entries in the book of reference into searchable spreadsheets – a laborious task that was nonetheless ultimately profitable, and secondly to produce small scale maps that show the development of specific industries or community functions across the parish. Examples of these are given in what follows.

Firstly Table 1 shows the major proprietors in 1822, which shows the dominant position held by the Dudley Estate.

Table 1. Major proprietors in 1822

Figure 2 shows the development of transport links across the parish – and in particular the building of the Stourbridge Extension Canal and the Kingswinford Railway, with associated tramways. The maps here have north to the top in the conventional way.

Figure 2 Railways, canals and tramways in 1822 and 1840

Figure 3 shows how coal mining spread across the parish between 1822 and 1840 – from the south to the north; and Figure 4 shows the consequent spread of disused mines.

Figure 3 Distribution of coal pits

Figure 4 Distribution of Old Colliery Land and Spoil

Figure 5 shows the increase in the number of places of worship across the parish, for both the established and non-conformist churches.

Figure 5 Churches and Chapels

Filled squares are Anglican churches or chapels and open squares are non-conformist meeting houses.

The above examples are of course only illustrations of what is a rather complex analysis, which shows that there was a significant development of industry in the northern half of the parish, followed by domestic, commercial and community developments. This was facilitated by the development of canals and railways, and was driven by the major landowners and industrialists, but was enthusiastically followed by very many others.

The paper

The paper summarised in this blog, and another on a different topic that was written around the same time, were originally intended to be sent to journals for publication – after five years of retirement I felt able once again to resume my career long warfare with journal editors and referees. However reading the journal author guides quickly made me change my mind, and I decided simply to mount the papers on this website. This has advantages in that doing so is good for my blood pressure and state of mind, and also allows for immediate dissemination of what has been written, but also disadvantages, in that the papers have not been tested by peer review and, as I am possibly the world’s worst proof reader, no doubt have significant numbers of typographical errors. Readers will come to their own views as to whether my approach has been the correct one.

Outline

This post links to a paper that analyses the burial registers of St Michael’s church in Lichfield over a 200-year period from 1813 to 2012, together with the memorial inscriptions for that period found on graves in the churchyards. It is written in a deliberately academic style, which probably restricts its audience somewhat, and is very technical and statistical in its approach. Indeed, it is based on a collated spreadsheet analysis of all burial register entries, grave location records and monumental inscriptions.  It summary, the analysis shows that over the first 150 years of the study period there was a remarkable stability in interment and funerary practices, but in the final 50 years there was a very major change. We will consider these in outline in this post, but full details can of course be found in the paper.

Over the 200 year period, the age profile of those interred changed in accordance with national trends, with a marked reduction in infant death rates, and an increase in deaths in the older age ranges – see figure 1 for female deaths for example.

Figure 1. Female interments by age 1813-2012

The biggest change to occur in the study period has been the change from burial to cremation as the major mode of interment – the national and St Michael’s percentage are sown in figure 2. It can be seen that St Michael’s lags significantly behind the national trend, not least because proper arrangements were not made for the interment of ashes until 1979 when a Cremated Remains area was set out.

Figure 2 National and local percentage of cremations

The interval between death and interment was remarkably stable up until the 1950s, with a 50^th percentile value of 3 to 4 days, and a 90^th percentile value of 6 to 7 days (figure 3). However in the 1960s, these values began to increase., and by 2012 the 50^th percentile of the interval between death and burial was 12 days, and between death and interment of ashes following cremation was 41 days. It is conjectured in the paper that this increase for both burials and interments.  has been driven by the need to arrange a time for the crematorium service.  These changes have profound effects on the nature of the mourning process. By the time of the funeral the families have passed through the first acute stage of grief and have become much more active in planning and conducting the funeral itself.

Figure 3. 50^th and 90^th percentiles of intervals between death and burial (1813-2012), interment of ashes (1960-2012) and cremation (2001-2012)

Associated with this, the percentage of graves with headstones or other monuments has increased significantly since the 1960s, from around 20% of al interments up till then, to around 90% by 2012 (figure 4). The nature these inscriptions has changed too, with family relationships becoming the primary subject.

Figure 4. Percentage of graves with monuments in both churchyards 1813-2012

Taken together, I argue in the paper that the data is consistent with earlier work by others that indicates the focus of interments and funerals has moved away from concentrating on the Christian message of resurrection and eternal life, towards celebration of the life of the deceased, primarily in the context of the family.

The paper

The location of the choir vestry

From the Staffordshire Advertiser January 13^th 1923.

St. Michael’s Church. Lichfield. New Vestry erected at a cost of £1,200

On Sunday evening the large and commodious vestry which has recently been erected at the south east corner of St. Michael’s Church, Lichfield, to replace the small and inadequate room utilized by the clergy and choir in the past, was dedicated by the Archdeacon of Stafford (Rev. High Bright) in the presence of a large congregation.

At the morning service the Rector (Rev. Percival Howard) took advantage of the opportunity to refer to the important improvement which the vestry has made to the church, and in the course of an appropriate address outlined the course of the restoration of the church in the years 1842 and 1890 ……….

There follows a very lengthy description of all the alterations made between 1842 and 1892, before finally returning to the matter in hand.

…….. Since then no structural alterations had taken place until last year, when the Parochial Church Council decided to put in hand the building if a new vestry. This work has now been completed under the direction of Messrs. Bateman and Bateman, Architects, by Messrs. R. Bridgeman and Sons, and in place of the old and inadequate vestry, a large and commodious room has been created, which the Rector thought they would all agree was a handsome addition to the church, and in perfect keeping with the rest of the architecture. To prevent the smoke and fumes entering the church, considerable alteration has also been made to the flue. The whole of this work, which had cost £1,200, has been carried out without an appeal thanks to the generosity of their forefathers, who had left an endowment for the benefit of their church.

Following the dedication on the evening, the Archdeacon preached from the text “Seek ye My face! My heart said unto me, Thee, they face Lord, will I seek (27^th psalm, 8^th verse)

The congregation included the Mayor (Councilor J. H. Bridgeman), the Sheriff (Mr W. E. Pead), the Town Clerk (Mr W. Brockson) and a number of other leading citizens.

It is tempting to think that the alterations to the flue were to remove the smoke and fumes generated by the clergy and choir, but these were probably something to do with the boiler house beneath the vestry! And for all the praise heaped on the design, the roof has leaked continually over the last 100 years.

Of the people mentioned, the mayor, J.H Bridgeman was the son of Robert Bridgman, who was an earlier mayor and the founder of the Ecclesiastical Architects Robert Bridgman and Sons. The firm had many local commissions including the east front of the cathedral. Both Robert and John are buried in the churchyard. Mr Pead, the Sheriff wrote a lengthy war diary describing the war in Lichfield, that was published and is available on Google Books. The Rector at the time, was Percival Howard (Rector 1913-1946), who served as an army chaplain in the Great War, and reports of his leaving presentation suggest he was highly regarded in the parish. There is a memorial to him in the chancel.

But after a hundred-year life, changes are in the air. The new parish rooms are intended to be connected to the church through the choir vestry, so that part of the church will see major changes in the next few years. But a hundred years for £1200 still represents pretty good value for money.

Preamble

Elsewhere on this web site and in “Kingswinford Manor and Parish” I have written about the Pensnett or Earl of Dudley’s Railway, which developed in the mid-nineteenth century from the original Kingswinford Railway to carry coal and metal products around the Brierley Hill, Pensnett and Kingswinford area. It was centred on the Round Oak Iron Works, but extended to Ashwood in the west, Baggeridge in the north, Saltwells in the east and Cradley in the south. Along with others who have written on the subject, I have primarily concentrated on the development of the system and the industry it served. However, the railway was an integral part of the local society, and impinged on the inhabitants in ways both good and bad. In this post I want to present some information on how the wider public perceived the railway, from a keyword search of the British Newspaper Archive for the phrases “Pensnett Railway”, “Earl of Dudley’s Railway” and “Kingswinford Railway” from the opening of the Kingswinford Railway in 1827 up to 1920. The extent and quality of this information is thus wholly dependent upon what the local newspapers thought it worthwhile to report on. As is the way with press reports, the material primarily concerns accidents that often resulted in inquests presided over by a coroner, or criminal activity that found its way to the local police and magistrate’s courts. We will thus consider firstly accidents on the railway, both to its workers and to others and then move on to consider criminal cases associated with the railway, principally small scale stealing of coal, but also some more serious incidents. 

Accidents and inquests

Accidents to railway workers were by no means unusual, and occurred throughout the period being considered. One major cause of accidents involved workers being run over by the trains, either through failing to see a train approaching, or through slipping from the train itself. For example, in the County Advertiser of 15/9/1877 we read that Thomas Jones, a labourer at the Wallows, was on the railway just after a possession (a flag) had ended, and was not aware of a train of 13 trucks approaching him. 

“The buffer of one of the trucks struck him and rolled him over. The wheels of six trucks went over him and he died in about five minutes”.

And from the County Express of 21/6/1910 we read of Richard Teague, aged 60, who worked on the incline between Level St. and Saltwells.

“…. several trucks loaded with ironstone had just reached the summit, when he attempted to disconnect the rope from the first wagon. He slipped down, and in a moment his body was cut in a frightful manner by the wheels, death being instantaneous.”.

Shunting was also a hazardous occupation, and there were a number of incidents of workers being crushed between wagons. From the Staffordshire Sentinel of 15/9/1877, concerning John Small at Sandfield Bridge.

“…the trucks did not stop at the proper time and he was crushed against a wall….. in a space of eight inches and was frightfully mangled…”

From the County Express of 28/5/1910, concerning Benjamin Parker (24), a shunter at Round Oak, 

“…both his legs were caught between the wagon and locomotive, with the result that they were frightfully smashed, and a thigh and a leg bone broken…”

There were also accidents to those other than railway workers. The most common seem to have been to children (almost always boys) who tried to jump on or off a moving train for a free ride. In the County Advertiser of 30/4/1904 we read that nine-year old Samuel Oakley of Lower Church St, Pensnett attempted to mount a train on the Barrow Hill incline, but slipped and fell beneath the train

“Two of the trucks passed over him and when the train had been stopped it was found that both legs had been severed from the body and his right arm and hand were terribly crushed”

He died soon afterwards at the Guest Hospital.  In the Dudley Chronicle of 17/6/1916, we read again of children from Church St. in Pensnett – Robert Clowes (14), George Adlington (14) and Thomas Downey (12). They jumped onto a train of empties on its way to Baggeridge. After riding some distance, Downey jumped off, and turned to see Clowes and Adlington disappear through the bottom frame of the truck. Clowes was killed and Adlington seriously injured, one of his arms being badly mangled. 

Much of the railway was used as walking routes by those in the locality, and inevitably this could lead to accidents. In 1882 George Shakespeare (13) had walked along the railway with a friend, Isaac Hardwick, who was taking supper to his father at the Round Oak works. As many readers will be aware one of the idiosyncrasies of the Pensnett Railway was that it crossed the GWR main line at Round Oak on an extended flat crossing across six or more tracks.  When the two lads were using this crossing, George missed the approach of an express train from Wolverhampton, and he was “swept down by the express” ((County Express 21/1/1882). We read further

“….when the train had passed the lad was found to be quite dead, the top of his head being crushed to pieces and his brains scattered about the place”. 

If an accident resulted in a fatality, an inquest was held within days at a local public house under the jurisdiction of the coroner, with a jury drawn from the locality. For example for George Shakespeare, the inquest was held in the Commercial Inn in Bromley. The verdict for accidents of the type described above was nearly always “accidental death” with little blame being attached to employer or operator.  In the early days these seem to have been relatively informal affairs, but in the early twentieth century, there was a greater level of formality, with factory inspectors often involved, and the Earl of Dudley being represented by legal council. 

Not all accidents resulted in injury to either workers or local residents. In 1916, Charles Mace, an engine driver, was shunting trucks in a siding near Tansey Green, when a number of trucks ran into the engine and through him off. The driverless engine and its coke trucks then ran for about a mile towards the Stallings Lane crossing where it derailed  (Dudley Chronicle, 28/1/1916). The report also notes that 

“It is a curious fact that the same engine, in charge of the same driver, was overturned at the same spot sometime ago.”

Curious indeed. Finally, it is worth mentioning the accident that received the most press coverage of them all, the same text being reported in newspapers the length and breadth of the country. Naturally it involved animals rather than humans. We quote the Worcestershire Chronicle of 6/11/1867 in full.

“On Friday evening at the Earl of Dudley’s railway at the Old Park  Coliery near Dudley, a singular accident occurred. Mr Phineas Parsons, a farmer of Pensnett, has the  right to run his sheep on the pasturage near the Old Park Colliery; and on the night in question one of Mr. Parson’s men proceeded to drive a flock of 65 sheep from one portion of the land to another, and in doings o the whole flock got onto the tramway. A couple of trucks, loaded with coal had been started in charge of one of the men down the incline, and these trucks overtook the sheep in a narrow cutting, and the consequence was that 23 were killed on the spot, and six others were so mutilated as to render it necessary to slaughter them at once. “

Phineas Parsons worked Hollies Farm (1872 Post Office Directory), so it is natural he would have pasturage rights in the Old Farm area nearby. It is not however clear which incline is referred to here – the Barrow Hill incline seems too far away from Old Park to be the incline in question, so perhaps there was a smaller incline within the Old Park colliery complex itself. 

Crime and punishment

The stealing of coal was endemic in the area in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, both from pits themselves and the railway, and scores of incidents are reported in the press.  This perhaps reflects the relative poverty of the area , as well as the easy availability of coal. Those involved were of all ages, although children and young adults were in the majority, with the magistrates court imposing fines of between 5s and £1 or 7 to 14 days imprisonment. In 1916 the local Superintendent of Police complained in court that “the local people went and fetched the coal away as though they had a right to it” (Dudley Chronicle 15/1/1916). Marxist historians would no doubt agree that they did, as the land from which the coal came had been common land on Pensnett Chase until a century before, when the rights of commoners had been extinguished by the Pensnett Chase Enclosure Award, and ownership of all underground resources had been “stolen” from the locals and given explicitly to the Earl of Dudley. Whether or not one accepts this analysis, it is hard not to feel sympathy for some of those arrested for coal stealing. For example Letitia Garbett (63) of Lower High St, Pensnett  was fined £1 for stealing coal from the railway, or fourteen days imprisonment. She complained she had no money and would have to go to prison in her old age (County Express 25/11/1911). Similarly, in 1916 Oswald Smith (11), Mary Parkes (12), Albert Beddard (10) and Alice Timmins (10) all of Chapel St Pensnett were caught with small amounts of coal in their possession by the local constable, and their parents were each fined 10s, or 6 days imprisonment if they could not pay (Dudley Chronicle 22/4/1916). 

Many of those brought to court were serial offenders. For example, Edward Jones (16) from Pensnett was said at his trial in 1881 to have been convicted six times in the previous four years, and was lucky not to be sent to the Quarter Sessions. He was imprisoned for six weeks with hard labour (County Express 31/12/1881). A year later Caroline Pulley (32), who was sent to prison for two months, was said to have nine previous convictions (Birmingham Daily Post 13/6/1882). 

One particular area of activity seems to have been the Queen St / Church St / Chapel St area of Pensnett, with many defendants coming from that area.  At the same hearing where  the elderly Letitia Garbett was sentenced, Eliza Wilde of Queens Lane, Pensnett was fined 10s; Barbara Watkins of Church St was fined £1; Gertrude Barker of Church St and Mary Hunt of Lower Church St were fined 5s each. This might be simply due to press reporting giving a false impression of the prevalence of crime in the area, but it may also be due to the assiduousness of the local night watchman, Josiah Hickman. He lived at Woodside and is recorded a number of times in the press as “proving cases” against a wide variety of offenders.  As an example of his modus operandi, we have a report in the County Express of 9/4/1910 of him lying on the ground somewhere around the end of Church St., waiting for Joseph Westwood to leave his home 50 or 60 yards away. The latter picked up a large chunk of coal from a truck on the railway (weighing about half a hundredweight), before Hickman detained him by putting his stick around his neck. Westwood managed to struggle free. It would seem that Ellen Horton was also in the area and tried to warn Westwood when Hickman appeared, shouting “Hey Up, Joe”. Westwood was fined 10s and Horton 5s for aiding and abetting. 

There are also indications of more organized activity. In hearings in 1916, several dozen women were charged with coal stealing from the Wallows area, where, it was said in court, the average loss on that part of the line was 25 to 30 tons per week (Dudley Chronicle 29/1/1916). It seems that there was an elaborate system of pickets to warn of approaching constables or watchmen. If any were caught and fined, then the fines were covered by a whip-round of all those involved. It was revealed that in total there were 215 convictions for coal stealing at Brierley Hill magistrates for the year ending January 24^th1916, 57 involving children (and their 57 guardians who paid the fines), 90 involving women and 11 involving men.  For all involved at the cases being heard that day the sentences were quite severe – a 25s fine, or 21 days in jail. It was clear the magistrates were significantly swayed by the fact that most of the women were in receipt of army allowances, as their husbands were in the forces, and were thought well able to afford to buy coal.

From time to time the minor criminality associated with the railway took on a more dangerous form. Of particular concern was deliberate vandalism by youths. In 1906 Hezekiah Price and Joseph Rider (both of Lower Church St. again) were charged with moving points and putting a brick between the rail and the points in order to derail a train. Although they claimed they were only playing, the magistrate took the matter very seriously and sentenced them to six strokes of the birch each (County Advertiser 22/9/1906). In a similar manner in 1913, George Treadwell (11) and Percy Treadwell (10) of Vine St, Hart’s Hill were charged with tampering with points at Round Oak, through the insertion of a brick. This time it actually resulted in a derailment of truck, with the brakeman on the buffers of the truck being thrown off, and the tearing up of 30 yards of permanent way.  

At the other end of the railway in 1914, Albert Greenaway (10) and Joe Andrews (10) of High St., Wall Heath, were charged with releasing a truck at the top end of the Ashwood incline by tampering with its brakes (Dudley Chronicle 9/5/1914). Fortunately nobody was injured, although the seriousness of the offence was stressed. On hearing that the boys had already been whipped by their fathers for the offence (which, said the magistrate, “was the proper thing to do”), the boys were discharged and ordered to pay costs of 7s 6d each only.

Some of the components of the railway of course were worth stealing in their own right. In 1906, Josiah Hickman caught two brothers from Low Town (near Holly Hall), James and Joseph Bagley, removing “keys” from the line – wooden pegs used to attach the rail to the chair. 18 were removed in total to a value of 3s. The brothers were fined 21s each, or a month in jail. The railway also carried valuable items of course other than coal. In 1917 there was a spate of thefts from trucks on the railway, but no culprits could be found. It seems that a trap was set, and two constables kept watch under cover on some trucks laden with “sharps” near Sandfield Bridge (Dudley Chronicle 3/11/1917). They waited from 3.00 in the afternoon, till 1.00 the next morning. Whilst they were watching, at about 12.50am, they saw Harry Darrell (20) a bricklayer of Smithy Lane, and Joseph Mason (45), a stallman from somewhere in Pensnett, make two visits to the truck to remove two bags of sharps. After the second bag was removed, Darrell was seized, but Mason ran away. On following him home, they found the other bag of sharps there, along with stolen bags of flour.  Similar bags of flower were found at Darrell’s home. The constables were commended by the magistrate for their actions.  Both Darrell and Mason pleaded guilty and asked for their previous exemplary character to be taken into account. Unfortunately, and frustratingly, the quality of the copy of the report in the BNA becomes very poor at this point, so I am unable to say what the magistrate made of the plea!

Shut End and Corbyn’s Hall

In an earlier post, I discussed the railway system around the Shut End and Corbyn’s Hall Ironworks and Colliery complexes in Pensnett  in the late 19^thcentury. One reader of that post pointed me in the direction of the Coal Authority web site, which contains huge amount of information about disused coalmines across the country, including of course the Shut End and Corbyn’s Hall area.   It really is a fascinating site, and I would encourage readers to have a look at it. What I want to do in this post is to use some of the information presented there to give more details of the mining operations that I briefly discussed in Kingswinford Manor and Parish (KMAP) and in the blog post just mentioned. Figure 1 shows the area that I will concentrate on, which is centred on the High Oak in Pensnett where Commonside meets Pensnett High Street. The figure shows the major roads in the area; the canal feeder pools, which are such a major feature of the local geography; and the locations of the Ironworks at Shut End and Corbyn’s Hall.

Figure 1 The study area

Topography and Geology

Figure 2 shows the topography of the study area, with the elevation profiles taken from Google Earth. It can be seen that it falls quite steeply from east to west from around 150 a.s.l. in the east to around 90m a.s.l. in the west. This will be seen to be of importance when considering the depths of coal seams and mines below.   

Figure 2 Topography of the study area from Google Earth

Details of the geology of the area can be obtained from the Edina Digimap web site. Figure 3 shows the underlying bedrock geology of the area. This has been very much simplified from the Digimap version to show only the major features. There are four main types of underlying geology – sandstone to the west and in outcrops across the area; an igneous outcrop in the Barrow Hill area; large areas of the Etruria formation of sandstone / mudstone, with some areas of Pennine Coal measures formation of sandstone / mudstone / siltstone. The latter two are the principal coal bearing strata. The major faults are also shown. The fault to the west is actually the edge of the South Staffordshire coalfield. There can be seen to be a number of faults in the area, which cause quite complex underground coal seam patterns. This will be discussed further below.

Whilst the figure shows the underlying geology, close to the surface the nature of the land changes completely, and the Digimap website describes it as “artificial ground” – a somewhat euphemistic description of the fact that the whole area is largely built on waste and colliery spoil.

Figure 3 Geology of the study area from Edina Digimap 

The Coal Authority web site

We turn now to the information provided on the Coal Authority web site. Coal has been mined over the entire region around our study area for many hundreds of years, firstly exploiting surface outcrops of coal, and then digging deeper and deeper mines to bring the buried coal to the surface.  Most of the main surface outcrops of coal in the region were in the area south and east of Brierley Hill, which unsurprisingly was the first part of the ancient parish of Kingswinford to undergo industrialization. In our particular study area there were however a few outcrops (figure 4) – at Brockmoor in the south and in the Coopers Bank / Old Park areas in the north. 

Figure 4 Surface outcrops of coal from Coal Authority web site

Figure 5 shows the seams of buried coal, where there is sufficient information for the contours to be mapped, and spot depths for seams at other points. The heights of the seams are all given in metres a.s.l. This figure needs to be considered in the light of the topographical information in figure 2 to enable the depth of the seams below ground level to be appreciated. The shallowest deposits are to the east of the area where the seams can be as little as 30m below the ground. In the west of the area, the seams are much further below ground level – up to 150m. The deepest mines in the region were ultimately to be those at Baggeridge to the north of the study region, where the deposits were 350m below sea level. 

Figure 5 Coal seams and depths from Coal Authority web site

Looking at the distribution of coal from another direction, figure 6 shows a section through the study area from a drawing by William Matthews in  a paper he wrote in 1860. Matthews was the proprietor of Corbyn’s Hall Iron Works at the time and a little more issued about him in KMAP.  The approximate location of the section is given on figure 3. The line as specified by Matthews is a direct line from Dudley Castle to “Kingswinford” although where in Kingswinford is not spelt out and it is not possible to identify the precise location of the line.  That being said the location of the igneous outcrop at Barrow Hill can be seen and the faulted and fractured nature of the coalfield is apparent.  The need for deep pits to extract the bottom seams of coal is also clear. 

Figure 6. Section through the study area (redrawn form Matthews , 1860)

Figure 7 shows the “mine openings” as defined on the coal authority site. These mines were not of course all operating at the same time, so the map gives no temporal information. But the huge number of openings is instructive (and the density here is by no means as high as in the older Black Country mining areas of Bilston and Wednesbury). The site gives name information for many of these, which to some degree is indicative of ownership. The five main groupings are indicated on the map of Figure 7 as follows.

• The Shut End group, originally owned and operated by James Foster in the 1830s as part of the Shut End Iron Works complex, and later by the Shut End Colliery Ltd. 
• The Tiled House / Corbyn’s Hall group, developed by Ben Gibbons and his associates in the 1830s to 1850s, and which provided coal for the Corbyn’s Hall Iron Works.
• The Himley Group of the Estate of the Earl of Dudley. It can be seen that this was to the east of Commonside, which was, in the main, the boundary of the Pensnett Chase Enclosure Award of 1784. A clause in the act reserved all the underground mineral rights to the Earl of Dudley and his successors, even where the land itself was allocated to others. The estate exploited these rights to the full over the next century and a half.  
• A group in the Old Park area, which had been mined to varying degrees for several centuries by the Earls of Dudley. 
• A group of mines around the Wallows / Woodside, which were probably also part of the Dudley estate.

Figure 7.  “Mine openings” from Coal Authority web site

If the “mine opening” category on the Coal Authority site does not give temporal information, the “mine working” category does.  For each mine that is included, it gives a year when it was working. The precise definition of this year is not clear to me i.e. was it the first year of operation; the last year; or something in between? But at least it gives an indication of when mines were in operation. I have presented this data in figures 8, 9 and 10 in twenty-year time slices – 1830-1850, 1850 to 1870 and 1870 to 1890. The former corresponds to some degree to that given on the 1840 Fowler map of Kingswinford, and the latter to the period I considered in my earlier post where I discussed the railways of the area. A comparison of the maps is instructive. Between 1830 and 1850 the highest concentration of mines is in the Shut End area, where the Iron Works was in operation, with limited mines around the Corbyn’s Hall area, presumably feeding the Iron Works there. Between 1850 and 1870 the mines close to the Shut End Iron Works had clearly all been worked out, and supplies were brought in from somewhat further afield by rail  – a process I discussed in the earlier post. In this period there was much more activity around Corbyn’s Hall and the High Oak area of Pensnett, and mines were operating in the Wallows and Old Park areas. It can thus be seen that the exploitation of the coal reserves by the Earl of Dudley’s estate was well underway in this period. In the 1870 to 1890 time slice, the situation has changed again with the most heavily exploited areas being in the Fens and Barrow Hill regions. Many of the mines in this area were in the residential areas of upper Pensnett. A cluster of them was around Pensnett church and vicarage, and no doubt contributed to the long term subsidence problems of structural damage to the church. Comparing this information with that given in KMAP for the distribution of the coal pits on the 1840 Fowler Map and the 1883 Ordnance Survey map, shows that these two sources show far fewer pits than the Coal Authority map. This might be of course simply because they show the situation at a particular time rather than in a twenty year time slice, but it does give some idea of both the short lived nature of many of the mines, and the uncertainties in handling data from different sources. 

Figure 8. “Mines working” between 1830 and 1850 from the Coal Authority web site

Figure 9. “Mines working” between 1850 and 1870 from the Coal Authority web site

Figure 10. “Mines working” between 1870 and 1890 from the Coal Authority web site

Final thoughts

Two final thoughts come to mind, in connection with items I have already posted. Firstly in Kingswinford Manor and Parish, when considering the spread of mining through the parish of Kingswinford I rather simplistically suggested that, during the nineteenth century, there was a gradual spread from the old mining areas in the Brierley Hill area in the south of the parish, northwards towards Pensnett and Shut End. The situation described above shows that it was rather more complex than that, with an early exploitation of the coal reserves around Shut End, and to a lesser extent Corbyn’s Hall, followed by a gradual “filling in” with mines of the areas between Brierley Hill and Brockmoor and Shut End over the next half century. 

Secondly in my earlier post on the Railways of the area, I put forward a model of how Ironworks / Colliery complexes developed in the area – firstly with ironworks and coalmines being in close proximity; then as the coal reserves became exhausted, with railway systems being developed to bring coal from mines somewhat further away but still in the locality, and finally with coal being brought from considerable distances. Figures 8 to 10 above tend to confirm this model in the Shut End area in particular, with the early development and later decline of mines close to the ironworks there, but there is also evidence of the same process around Corbyn’s Hall. 

Without a doubt the Coal Authority web site has a huge amount of data of interest to industrial historians, and I am very grateful that I was told about it. In this post I feel I have only scratched the surface of this material – so I may well return to it in future.