Fenton Park

Broadfield and Fenton Park collieries

Fenton park and cemetery were laid out on Broadfield colliery and boardered the nearby Fenton Park colliery area.  

Broadfield colliery

The area of Broadfield colliery is where Fenton park was laid out.

At least two shafts were working in the 1750’s and were owned by owned by Miss Clare Maria Broade at Fenton Vivian, when James Brindley equipped them with engines

Simeon Shaw writing c.1829 said “Almost close to this (Fenton Park Colliery) is Broadfield Colliery also extremely valuable for the extent and depth of strata of its several mines.”

Broadfield Colliery was evidently worked in conjunction with the Fenton Park Colliery for a period in the 1800's, it closed in the mid-1860's.

There was an explosion at a pit called Greenfield at the Broadfield colliery on the 27th June 1843,  the explosion was caused by miners working with naked candles which caused firedamp to catch fire resulting in the loss of nine lives

The following are the names of those who died:

James Smith, Fenton, age 36 wife and two children.
James Dawson, Fenton, age 38 wife and four children, this poor man’s wife only confined to her last child on Saturday.
Jacob Tipton, Fenton, age 11.
Samuel Thornton, Fenton, age 36 wife and seven children.
Alfred Tomkinson, Fenton, age 18 unmarried.
Peter Bolderstone, Longton, age 36 widower 3 children.
William Shone, Longton, age 22 married no children.
William Barker, Longton, age 23 married no children.
Moses Heath, Fenton, age 16.
 

Fenton Park colliery

The mines on the nearby Fenton Park estate are known to have been worked for 150 years from 1728 by the owners and their tenants.

During the early part of this period it was probably the Fentons, then the owners of the estate, who were working there, with eighteen small coal and ironstone mines in operation by 1728 and in 1790 were leased to the Fenton Park Company; this consisted mainly of potters, including Josiah Spode and John Harrison.

A 30-year lease was granted to a similar group, including Spode, Wolfe and Minton, in 1813. The Fenton Park Colliery was evidently the most notable in Fenton c. 1840 when Ward singled it out for special mention; he also described it as situated 'on and about a commanding eminence, once the pure and peaceful domicile of their [the owners'] ancestry but now the black and noisy seat of Cyclopean labours'.

Fenton Park Colliery itself was closed about 1879.

A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 8

Fenton Park colliery

photo: Mat 2008

One of the few structures remaining from Fenton Park collieries is this chimney base.
In the background can be seen the housing in Ubberley and Bentilee.