This area is famed for its Free Miners, which appear to make it the only coalfield with any form of organization which was broadly analogous to the King’s Fields of lead mining history. As well as coal mining, this area supported an important iron industry. One or two coal mines are still working, but in a very small way.

Youles reported a project to record an area with a high density of pre-seventeenth century coal pits, many less than 20 metres apart, which appear to have worked three thin seams. They ranged from quite shallow circular depressions, often surrounded by a low bank, to large workings with a diameter of 10 – 12 metres and up to three metres deep.1,2

Mining in the Newent coalfield, an outlier of the above, appears to have ended in 1880.3

  1. Youles, T. “Delving In Dean: The Delves An Area Of Unrecorded Early Coal Mining” Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal (2003) pp.31-35
  2. Youles, T. “Delving In Dean: The Delves An Area Of Unrecorded Early Coal Mining (Part Two)” Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal (2004) pp.3-11
  3. Bick, D.E. “Records of the Newent Coalfield” Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal (1979), pp.1-8
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