The Opening of the Colliery
Arley Colliery Wagon
from Castle Trains
Arley Colliery Company Ltd.
Managing Director : George Herbert Fowler.Certified Manager : Edward Knox.
MAP : Arley Before 1968.
In 1901 an ambitious young mining engineer, Edward 'Teddy' Knox, sank an exploratory shaft in the hope of finding coal.
After almost a year no coal had been discovered, at 320 yards below the surface, and it was suggested that work halt. Knox, however, persuaded his co-financier, George Herbert Fowler, to allow exploration to move sideways and coal was quickly discovered. The original shafts had been sunk, it was found, into the geological remains of a two hundred yard wide river bed passing through the coal deposits.
The pit started on the 1st January 1901, the first bricks were delivered in March and the first coal was extracted eighteen months after the initial exploratory activity, in 1902.
Arley Growing Up
Introduction
Arley Before The Mine
Opening of the Colliery
Teddy Knox
Development of the Colliery
Colliery Shafts
Life At Arley Colliery
Seams Worked At Arley Colliery
After Nationalisation
Population and Housing
Hill Top & Gun Hill
George Street Area
Closure of Arley Colliery
The National Coal Board
Local Belief
Arley After The Closure
Uses of Colliery Land
Conclusion
Credits & Addendum