Colliery headstock and winding house listed : Swanwick, Derbyshire

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 407

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This rare example of a private colliery – called Swanwick Common Colliery and dating to the early 20th century – was recently granted Grade II-listed status. Surviving collieries are rare in England, and those from private, small-scale operations particularly so, despite having once been fairly common. In fact, Historic England is not aware of any surviving examples directly comparable in terms of scale – although there is a reconstruction of a small pit complex at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley.

Much of the colliery infrastructure is still present, including the headstock – used to raise and lower both miners and equipment into the pit. The winding house, which once contained the machinery that would have wound the cables for the lift, also survives and still features remnants of electrical switchgear used to power the winding mechanism. Although Swanwick Common Colliery was a small, private production, it is thought that horizontal underground passages connected it with the larger, nearby collieries of Swanwick Old Colliery and Swanwick Deep Colliery – both owned by the Morewood family. Production at the Swanwick Common Colliery most likely ended sometime in the middle of the 20th century, as it is listed as ‘disused’ on the 1961 Ordnance Survey map.

Text: K Krakowka / Image: Historic England Archive