Qualla: Lundhill Colliery Explosion

Lundhill Colliery Explosion: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit myself, CC BY-SA 3.0. At twenty past twelve on 19 February 1857, the men and boys at Lundhill Colliery were finishing their dinners. Most had eaten underground - 200 of the day shift staying down, only 22 having walked home to eat with families. The miners ranged in age from ten years old to fifty-nine. Their lighting was wax candles. Their safety boots were mostly too big. Then a violent explosion tore through the workings, sent a sheet of flame up the pit shaft that illuminated the countryside for miles, and blew one of the cages out of the top of shaft two. By the end of the day, 189 of them were dead.

Image: myself | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lundhill Colliery Explosion: The Village That the Pit Built

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit myself, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wombwell had been farmland before Lundhill Colliery arrived - a small population on the South Yorkshire coalfield, growing slowly. The pit changed everything. By the 1850s Lundhill was one of the largest and deepest collieries in Yorkshire, and Wombwell had become a colliery vill...

Image: myself | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lundhill Colliery Explosion: Firedamp

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit myself, CC BY-SA 3.0. Firedamp is the miners' word for methane - the colourless, odourless, explosive gas that seeps from coal seams. In the candle-lit pits of the mid-nineteenth century it was the constant enemy. A pocket of it would gather in a heading, a flame would find it, and the gas would ignit...

Image: myself | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lundhill Colliery Explosion: The Rescue

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit myself, CC BY-SA 3.0. The mine was now on fire, and a second explosion was a serious possibility. A group of volunteers - because that is who staffed mine rescues in 1857, neighbours and off-shift miners - descended shaft two anyway. They found 19 survivors, scorched and badly injured. Two of those su...

Image: myself | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lundhill Colliery Explosion: What Remains

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit myself, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Lundhill pit no longer exists. The ground above it is now Hillies Golf Course, a nine-hole layout in the rolling former coalfield landscape. On 17 February 2007 - the 150th anniversary of the disaster - a memorial was unveiled in front of the clubhouse. The sculpture incorpor...

Image: myself | CC BY-SA 3.0