Former colliery equipment store and electricity
sub-station. c.1948 with minor late C20 alterations. Steel
framed, with red brick infill panels, concrete floors and
asbestos sheet roof covering.
PLAN: Linear, double pile plan with twin pitched
roofs, aligned east-west.
EXTERIOR: 2 storey main ranges to north and
south, 20 window bays, with regularly spaced, tall multi-pane
metal windows to ground floor and shallow windows of matching
type to upper floor, the window heads at eaves level. Metal
frame expressed externally, upper floor windows with bands to
heads and cills.
East end with twin wagon doors located centrally
in each gable. Electricity sub-station extends from south-east
corner. Wagon doors to lean-to in west end wall, now blocked,
and to north range, both with rail access to interior. South
wall with central wagon door and external metal stair to first
floor serving lift tower.
INTERIOR: Tall ground floor area, essentially an
open work/storage made up of 2 “aisles” formally served by
travelling cranes and narrow rail tracks allowing for mechanised
handling of equipment throughout the ground floor area. Inserted
office to lower part of ground floor at east end, west end of
south range with original steel-framed internal wall. The north
range retains fittings for travelling crane, and has open access
into north-west corner lean-to extension. South range with lift
shafts to upper floor together with a steel staircase.
HISTORY: The Chatterley Whitfield Colliery site
is acknowledged to be the most comprehensive survival of a deep
mine site in England, with a range of surviving structures and
buildings unequalled in any other former or surviving coalfield
site in Britain. Coal extraction here was first recorded in
1750, and the site remained in production until 1 March 1977. In
1978, the site became the Chatterley Whitfield Mining Museum,
operated by the National Coal Board. In 1993, the museum went
into liquidation, and the site was handed back to the freehold
owner, Stoke-on-Trent City Council in 1994.
The former Area Shaft building is a prominent
and little altered example of a type of service building which
was operated in support of the mainstream coal extraction and
transportation functions on colliery sites throughout England.
Its physical and functional relationship with other buildings
related to the maintenance and equipment supply functions of a
complex, multi-functional industrial site was a direct one, and
in the context of the most complete survival of a deep mine site
in England, it can be regarded as an essential component of the
colliery ensemble.
