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Racecourse Colliery - Black Country Living Museum, Dudley.
The ground beneath the Museum site was once mined for coal, limestone, fireclay, and ironstone. More than 40 old mine shafts are shown on old plans and around one of these shafts, Racecourse Colliery has been built as a typical small Black Country coalpit. Small scale, ‘rough and ready’ pits were common in the Black Country. There were once as many as 500 or 600 of these pits across the region.
The colliery was so named because the land on which it stands was originally the Dudley Racecourse which was closed when the railway line from Dudley to Wolverhampton was built in 1846.
Racecourse Colliery is shown as it would have been in about 1910 with the Manager's Office in the weighbridge house from Rolfe Street in Smethwick, the typical hovel and blacksmith's shop. It represents a typical Black Country coal, or fire clay mine.
The mine shaft which forms the centre-piece of Racecourse Colliery was originally the Earl of Dudley’s Coneygree Colliery Pit No. 126. It operated between 1860 and 1902, before being abandoned and the shaft filled in. The wooden pit frame stands over a shaft 30 metres deep and a cylinder outside drum steam powered winding engine would wind the cage up and down the shaft.
Racecourse Colliery - Black Country Living Museum, Dudley.
The ground beneath the Museum site was once mined for coal, limestone, fireclay, and ironstone. More than 40 old mine shafts are shown on old plans and around one of these shafts, Racecourse Colliery has been built as a typical small Black Country coalpit. Small scale, ‘rough and ready’ pits were common in the Black Country. There were once as many as 500 or 600 of these pits across the region.
The colliery was so named because the land on which it stands was originally the Dudley Racecourse which was closed when the railway line from Dudley to Wolverhampton was built in 1846.
Racecourse Colliery is shown as it would have been in about 1910 with the Manager's Office in the weighbridge house from Rolfe Street in Smethwick, the typical hovel and blacksmith's shop. It represents a typical Black Country coal, or fire clay mine.
The mine shaft which forms the centre-piece of Racecourse Colliery was originally the Earl of Dudley’s Coneygree Colliery Pit No. 126. It operated between 1860 and 1902, before being abandoned and the shaft filled in. The wooden pit frame stands over a shaft 30 metres deep and a cylinder outside drum steam powered winding engine would wind the cage up and down the shaft.