Coal Mining

Open-Cast Coal Mining by Mike Smith

Shuttington and Alvecote are on the northern edge of what used to be called the “North Warwickshire Coalfield”.  The spoil heap at Alvecote is now nothing more than a green mound alongside the canal.  It was the first spoil heap in Warwickshire to be made safe after the Aberfan disaster in 1966, when a spoil heap in Wales became a mud slide which engulfed a school full of children.
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Only fifty years ago coal was the main domestic and industrial fuel, and particularly just after the Second World War it was imperative to maintain a good supply and as cheaply as possible.  Britain was even exporting coal in those days, the country was broke after the war and needed to earn money where-ever it could.

Coal was just under the surface near Shuttington, and in the 1950s it was convenient to take that coal quickly. There were two open-cast sites, one below the church and the other at the back of “The Wolferstan Arms”. 
 
The photograph shows the workings below Shuttington in the 1950s.  Although the site is a very small one, it does illustrate what open-casting is all about: shifting vast amounts of soil from one place to another to expose the seams of coal.  It is a perpetual process of huge noisy machines digging, transporting, tipping and levelling millions of tons of soil and rock, day after week after month after year.
 
If open-cast mining came back to Shuttington, the 1950s workings in comparison would be insignificant.  The new hole would go as deep as the old tunnels that ran from the colliery at Alvecote.  It would be like stepping back into the time when dirt, dust and grime were part of every-day life.  It would be an admission that the technology to heat our homes and provide energy for industry has advanced little over the past half century.
 
Today the area benefits from the old mucky industrial workings.  The extensive system of shallow pools around Alvecote, which are so attractive to birds, fishermen and walkers, are due to subsidence, the Pooley Heritage Site, once laid waste around the colliery head, is a marvellous walking area and the old spoil heap there is gradually being colonised by trees and provides a superb view point.
 
Open-casting does not even offer the hope of better things in the future.  Rather than a hole after coal extraction, there is more of a heap, because the replaced soil is not so compact.  There will just be a poorer quality farm land, with no trees of course for seventy years or so!