Bygone Days

Back in 1837 there were attempts to extract coal from Foxes Bridge but it was only with the sinking of two new shafts further along to the north of the original endeavour that any coal was actually raised. These two new shafts, Deep and Land, successfully reached down as far as 850 feet so that coal from the laminated layers in the bedrock of the Forest of Dean that are known as the: Churchway High Delf, Lowery, Rocky, Starkey and Twenty Inch Seams could be worked.

Like most mines in the Forest, the local hydrology meant that there were water problems. As far back as 1873 a 30-inch beam engine was operating, which was joined later by a 60-inch Cornish high-pressure engine in 1880 to keep the water levels in the underground roads under control. In fact the eventual demise of Foxes Bridge Colliery in 1930 was occasioned by water penetrating into the mine from the pit next door (Crump Meadow) which had been closed down in 1929 and where the water levels were now uncontrolled.

As one of the largest mines in the Forest, Foxes Bridge had good connections with the outside world - a rope-worked incline down to the Great Western Railway's Forest of Dean Branch and a link to the Severn and Wye Railway's Mineral Loop. In one of the infrequent 'snapshot' years in the Forest coal's statistics (1880) Foxes Bridge produced 126,978 tons in that year and later on in 1906, using a more modern measure of output, its' output was given as being in excess of 500 tons/day.

Further expansion of the mine came in 1919 when Trafalgar Colliery was jointly-purchased, by Foxes Bridge in conjunction with Lightmoor Colliery, as part of the measures to combat the inflow of water from Trafalgar Colliery.
One gauge of the amount of coal produced, as well as the danger in doing so, at Foxes Bridge was that 32 people died in accidents in the mine between 1863 and 1918. Today, however, all that remains, beside the Family Cycle Path that crosses the site of the mine, are fragments of concrete and stone walls, some foundations and bridge buttresses. The remnants of what might have been a loading wharf are also visible. The shaft, naturally, has been filled-in and the rest of the site including the spoil tips landscaped.