Clandown

About This Location:

• Clandown colliery is first mentioned in 1793, sinking of the shaft was around 1801 when the lease was signed.
• The site chosen for the sinking was quite by chance on the line of the north south fault, which at Clandown was at a vertical depth of 720 feet.
• The sinking was hard enough without the added problem of the fault which gave the impression that no coal was to be found, in November 1809 the work was abandoned.
• By 1810 the owners had raised enough money to restart the sinking of the shaft, finally, the reward came on November 18th when at a great depth of 1200 feet coal was found.
• Some coal was wound up to October 1812.
• The success of the pit can be judged from the fact in the year to September 1821 coal worth over £12000 was produced.
• Because of the fault the shaft had to reach a greater depth than ever before in Somerset of 1437 feet, this gave the pit the capability of raising 60-100 tons of coal per day.
• Water entered the underground workings from the old Radstock Colliery. The year ending September 30th 1907 showed a loss of £766 followed by a loss of £1143 in the following year.
• In March 1917 John Henry Iles had become the sole proprietor, he was also connected with the amusement park in Margate Kent called Dreamland, l spent a lot of time as a boy when visiting Kent on holiday in this park.
• December 1924 Sir Frank Beauchamp bought the pit.
• The colliery coal was transported by the Somerset Coal Canal via an incline tramway down from Clandown to Radstock, then by the S & D railway which opened in 1882.
• The Clandown miners were a jolly lot as they needed to be with the awful conditions of work at the pit.
• There is a story about a group of miners walking to work finding a drunk lying in the road.
• For a joke they carried him to the colliery and took him underground, on sobering up he was horrified to find himself in what he thought was hell.
• In the year to May 1846, 13,850 tons of coal was produced.
• There was very little modernisation to the pit which resulted in Clandown Colliery closing in November 1929.
• In 1946 Wheelers Breeze Block factory was established on the colliery site.
• In 1968 when clearing an area for a factory extension they uncovered the old winding shaft lying dangerously close to the surface in the middle of the site.

About Somerset Coal:

We believe that Somerset coal was first discovered by the Romans. They were in the West Country 43AD, and there are references to it being used at the Temple of Minerva in Aqua Sulis (Bath). The coal used was probably found in coal outcrops around Stratton-on-the-Fosse, and transported along the Roman road – the Fosseway – for use in Bath.

Early coal workings, from coal outcrops, were largely in the Nettlebridge Valley, around Stratton-on-the-Fosse and Coleford, and to the North of the Coalfield, around High Littleton. It is estimated that output in 1500 was estimated about 10,000 tons a year, and that this had increased 10-fold by the late 1600s…

For even more information and history of Somerset Coal, Click Here. 

The Figure in Clandown