History of Stoke-on-Trent

The Stoke mining industry set several national and international records. Wolstanton Colliery, when modernised, had the deepest mining shafts in Europe at 3,197 ft. In 1933, Chatterley Whitfield Colliery became the first Colliery in the country to mine one million tons of coal. In the 1980s Florence Colliery in Longton repeatedly set regional and national production records; in 1992 the combined Trentham Superpit (Hem Heath and Florence) was the first mine in Europe to produce 2.5 million saleable tonnes of coal.

Today the mines are all closed, though the scars of mining still remain on the landscape. Slag heaps are still visible on the skyline, now covered with flora and fauna. The Chatterly Whitfield site reopened as a museum two years after its closure in 1976. The museum closed in 1991 and the site became a local nature reserve. It was declared a Scheduled Ancient Monument by English Heritage in 1993. The abandoned subterranean mines are inaccessible, though they still add complications to many building projects and occasionally cause minor tremors, detectable only by specialised equipment.

The Phoenix Trust, an independent not-for-profit foundation, is campaigning to turn Stoke-on-Trent and the wider North Staffordshire Coalfield into a World Heritage Site due to its historic economic significance, its leading role in the industrial revolution, and as the birthplace of Primitive Methodism.

Steel

The iron and steel industries occupied important roles in the development of the city, both before and after federation. Especially notable were those mills located in the valley at Goldendale and Shelton below the hill towns of Tunstall, Burslem and Hanley. Shelton Steelworks' production of steel ended in 1978—instead of producing crude steel, they concentrated on