Coal Mining Hanley
Although the Hanley-Shelton area abounds in coal, the mining industry has never been as extensive there as in the northern part of the Potteries. Its records, however, go back nearly as far. In 1297 the possessions of the lord of Newcastle manor included an 'underground coal mine' at Shelton worth 10s. a year. A mine in the Great Row seam there which was being worked early in the 16th century was still in operation in 1612, and a mine in the Small Row described as in Hanley and Shelton was being worked in 1561. John Bell of Shelton Mill was mining at Hanley Green in 1643, and in 1650 he held the lease of two mines in the Great Row and Cannel Row described as at Shelton and Hanley. Coal mines at both places were listed among the possessions of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1675, and a few years later Plot recorded the digging of 'peacock' coal at Hanley Green. Two coal mines in Hanley and Shelton, in the tenure of Thomas Fernihough in 1713, were leased by the Duchy of Lancaster to William Burslem of Newcastle from 1717; in 1732 Lord Gower was granted the reversion of Burslem's lease, due to expire in 1743 or 1744, and this evidently marks the beginning of the Leveson-Gower family's extensive industrial undertakings in Hanley and Shelton. The family's mining operations, run by the Shelton Iron, Steel, and Coal Company from 1888, were in fact the main feature of the expansion of the coal industry in the Hanley district in the 19th century, particularly in the 1850's and 1860's.
During the 19th century the disused shafts of earlier workings were being built over and becoming a public danger and thus added to the nuisance of mining subsidence. Soon after the creation of the borough in 1857 the borough council paid some £2,000 for a plan showing the whereabouts of these shafts. In fact it was not until 50 years later that any action was taken, following the disappearance of a man in 1904 owing to a sudden subsidence in John Street. Some 20 disused shafts, mostly boarded over, were then located and covered with brick. Since c. 1937 Hanley has had only one colliery in operation, the Deep Pit, formerly only a part of Earl Granville's Shelton Colliery.
John Bell's two mines at Hanley and Shelton in the mid-17th century may well be identifiable with the two leased by the Duchy in the early 18th century to William Burslem and then to Lord Gower (see above) who himself leased 'a coal work' at Hanley Green, apparently in 1752, to Jeremiah Smith who was still the tenant in 1774. These were presumably the operations which caused trouble when the foundations of the new St. John's Church were dug c. 1788, having also, it seems, been at least partly responsible for the ruinous state of the first church. Lord Gower's grandson, the 4th Earl Granville, was mining at Shelton by at least 1818, and by the early 1830's his Shelton Colliery included coal and ironstone pits in the area between Mill Street and Brook Street and also south of Mill Street. The number of these pits was increased to serve Lord Granville's ironworks nearby, opened in 1841 (see below), but most of them were closed c. 1889; the two coal pits near Hanley goods station, however, were employing 681 below ground and 144 above in 1902 and remained in operation for a few years longer. The Shelton Colliery also included the Deep Pit at Far Green, opened by 1854; it was stated in 1869 to be the deepest pit in North Staffordshire, and in the early 20th century its workings were said to extend to Stoke on the south and Foxley on the north-west. Employing 485 below ground and 118 above in 1894, 588 below and 209 above in 1902, and 750 below and 290 above in 1957, it has remained the only colliery in operation in Hanley since production ceased at the Racecourse Pits c. 1937. These were opened by Lord Granville c. 1870 on the former racecourse to the north of Etruria Hall and in 1894 were employing 623 below ground and 193 above; one of the pits, devoted solely to ironstone mining, was closed in 1901.
The Ivy House Colliery between Leek New Road and the Caldon Canal east of Ivy House Road was being worked by 1841 and was closed c. 1889. The Hallfield Colliery (coal and ironstone) on the high ground at the end of Upper Market Street (now Huntbach Street), with a tramway running down to the Caldon Canal near Ivy House Road, was in operation by 1851. Only coal was being mined there in 1858 because of the low price paid locally for ironstone, and the colliery seems to have closed soon afterwards. The Northwood Colliery north of the junction of Bucknall Old and New Roads was in operation by the mid-1860; employing 430 below ground and 90 above in 1902, it was closed c. 1920.
From: 'Hanley: Local government, economic history and social life', A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 8 (1963),