INDUSTRIES 



Tortworth and the Avon, the coalpits at Yate, 

 as well as the more extensive collieries of 

 Kingswood and Pucklechurch. The seams 

 worked vary much in thickness throughout 

 the coalfield. The ' longwall ' system of 

 working is generally adopted now in the Bristol 

 district and at Parkfield, but the ' pillar and 

 stall' at the Yate and Coalpit Heath Col- 

 lieries as well as at the Oldland Colliery near 

 Golden Valley. Some of the seams in the 

 Bristol district are fiery, but those worked at 

 Parkfield appear fairly free from gas, though at 

 Yate gas is said to be got in the Hard Seam. 



At one of the deeper mines the temperature 

 is said to vary from 65 F. at the surface to 

 about 79 F. at a depth of 790 yds., the lowest 

 point at which the coal is worked being about 

 820 yds. At present there are scarcely any 

 artificial means of cooling the air except by the 

 exhaust from compressed air engines, but it is 

 not considered likely that the increase of tem- 

 perature will make it impossible to work coal in 

 the deeper levels of these mines, though the ex- 

 pense must of necessity become greater, and an 

 advance will be made in the adoption of mechani- 

 cal traction. No coal-cutting machinery is at 

 present in use, and it is estimated that little dif- 

 ference exists in the amount of coal extracted 

 per man between the deep mines and those 

 more shallow. 1 



In the slightest mention of the Bristol mining 

 district during the later nineteenth century, it 

 is necessary to recall the name of Mr. Handel 

 Cossham, who, from a clerk at Yate Colliery, 

 rose to be the greatest colliery owner in the south- 

 west of England. About 1875 he bought the 

 freehold of the minerals of St. George's district 

 and the lordship of the manor of Kingswood, as 

 well as the duke of Beaufort's mining property at 

 Stapleton.* In 1879 his firm was formed into a 

 limited company, the Wethered family selling 

 out the interest they had held, while Mr. Cossham 

 acquired the predominant interest under the new 

 arrangement. Till his death in 1889 he was the 

 controlling power in the management of the 

 Kingswood and Parkfield Collieries, and the 

 property of the company comprised in 1891 

 about 3,000 acres of mineral freehold, with a 

 daily out, ut from the collieries of from 700 to 

 i,OOO tons of steam and house coal, while em- 

 ployment was found above and below ground for 

 an average of 1,500 persons. 



Beside the Bedminster, Easton, Kingswood 

 and Parkfield Collieries Co. other important firms 



1 For a technical account of the Somersetshire coal- 

 field, which includes southern Gloucestershire, see a 

 paper by Mr. G. E. J. McMurtrie, in Journ. of the 

 Brit. Sot. of Mining Students, xii, 161 et seq. (1890) ; 

 and Hull, Coalfields of Gt. Britain (5th ed.), 68 

 et seq. We are also under obligation for local in- 

 formation kindly furnished. 



' Braine, Hist, of Kingswood Forest, 264. 



interested in the Bristol Coalfield are the Bristol 

 United Collieries, A. Brand & Co., the Coal Pit 

 Heath Co., Leonard Boult & Co. and the Old- 

 land Colliery Co. The average yearly output 

 from this field was from 1870-80, 524,156 

 tons, from 1880-90, 483,881 tons, from 

 1890-1900, 395,546 tons, and from 1900-3, 

 430,697 tons. In 1903, 411,077 tons were 

 raised, and the district produces house coal, gas 

 coal, bituminous, coking, and manufacturing coal 

 as well as steam coal. 



There can be little doubt that lead was worked 

 at an early period within the borders of the 

 present county of Gloucester, and probably by the 

 Romans. Two dated pigs of lead * have been 

 found in the bed of the Frome near Traitor's 

 Bridge, and there is reason for supposing that 

 they may have come from Penpark Hole, some 

 3^ miles to the north, which in the boundaries 

 described in a Saxon charter of 882, is mentioned 

 as the 'leadgedelf or lead-diggings. 4 This exten- 

 sive mine was further identified by two mining 

 'captains,' Sturming in 1669 and Collins in 1682, 

 as having been worked for lead. Traces of old 

 workings also exist, or existed, on Durdham 

 Downs and at Clifton, especially at the junction 

 of the Limestone and Lias, and as far north as 

 Almondsbury. The mining of this metal in any 

 quantity seems, however, to have ceased in 

 Gloucestershire by the period of the Angevins, if 

 not before, as in the reign of Henry II lead was 

 more easily procured from Shropshire.* 



Although lead in the form of argentiferous 

 galena occurs rather widely, though in uncertain 

 quantities, in the Bristol district, it has been 

 worked to a very small extent to commercial 

 advantage in modern times. About 1712 some 

 attempt * was made to raise lead, calamine (the 

 ore of zinc), and manganese at Durdham Downs, 

 and an account or prospectus was issued which 

 anticipated some of the characteristic features of 

 the familiar financial literature of our own day, 

 but the enterprise does not seem to have been of 

 very long continuance. For many years zinc 7 

 was turned out in fair quantities by Mr. Cham- 

 pion and his successor from works established 

 at Bristol about 1743, but the ore he em- 

 ployed came from beyond the Gloucestershire 

 border, and probably from Somerset. In the 

 late eighteenth century lead was occasionally 

 worked, as by Mr. Freeman at Almondsbury in 

 1775, but apparently it was not found in pay- 

 able quantities, 8 and the same remark applies to 

 the workings at Abson and Wick, mentioned 

 by Rudder. 9 



' Briit. and Glouc. Arch. See. Train, iv, 320 et seq. 

 4 Birch, Cart. Sax. ii, 174 (No. 550) ; Antij.Mag. 

 iii, 279. 



' Pipe Roll, 29 Hen. II, Glouc. 



* R. Hunt, Brit. Mining, 831 et seq. 



' Watson, Chemical Essays (ed. 1786), iv, 37, 38. 



* Brut, ana" Glouc. Arch. See. Trans, iv, 324 et seq. 



* Gloucestershire, 211. 



237 



