Earthwatcher's photos with the keyword: coal mine

The mining village of Arkwright Town near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, experienced serious methane emissions from the ground following closure of the Arkwright Colliery drift mine in 1988. As a result, the entire community was moved into brand new properties, constructed some 200 - 600 metres away. The original village was then demolished and obliterated as part of an opencast coal mining operation in the 1990s designed to remove the old deep mine workings and associated strata which were the source of the methane emissions. This methane vent pipe is one of a pair at this location situated on the restoration backfill of the Arkwright opencast coal mine in order to safely control residual methane emissions from the backfill and surrounding strata.

This is a view of Maltby colliery in South Yorkshire in 1981. The two existing shafts are visible in the background, with a drilling rig situated on the site of the newly approved No.3 shaft to be sunk to the Parkgate seam at a depth of over 900 metres. A fully cored borehole was drilled in order to provide information about the ground conditions (rock strength, fracturing, water flows, etc) prior to letting the contract and commencement of shaft sinking. Today (in 2008), this view would be obscured by the massive No.3 Shaft winding tower, visible for miles around. At the start of 2008, Maltby Colliery is one of the few operational deep mines still remaining in the UK. It is owned and operated by the Hargreaves Group. 2020 update: It's all gone now, of course :-(

Actually it's not tomato soup, but an ochrous minewater discharge from a collapsed, abandoned mineshaft in Ecclesall Woods next to the Limb Brook. The shaft forms part of the long abandoned Dore Colliery and dates from the latter part of the 19th century. The steel plate in the lower right is part of a V-notch weir used to measure the water flow rate. The water temperature here is about 12-13 C all year round due to the geothermal heating effect of the old abandoned coal mine workings that the water has flowed through before emerging from the top of this old shaft. The water is also fairly acid - pH about 5.5.