Staffordshire's Foxfield Light Railway Society has announced the opening of Foxfield Colliery for monthly guided tours.
The Railway is located in Blythe Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent, and was built in 1892-93 to provide a connection from the colliery to the North Staffordshire Railway.
Both colliery and railway are now heritage attractions which preserve industrial history.
Father and son John and Enoch Mann started The Foxfield Colliery in 1880, and founded the Foxfield Colliery Company Ltd in 1893. In 1927, the Manns sold the colliery to nearby Parkhall Colliery.
Then, in 1947, the colliery came into public ownership as the post-war Labour government nationalised coal mining and established the National Coal Board.
Foxfield Colliery closed in August 1965, considered no longer economic to work.
The Foxfield Railway began in 1883 as a narrow-gauge line, and was converted to standard gauge ten years later, opening in 1894. The Foxfield Light Railway Society began in 1966.
The colliery welcomed regular visitors until 2019, but since then has only opened on Gala Days and by special request.
However, a grant of ten thousand pounds from the Association of Independent Museums and the Heritage Lottery Fund has enabled it to re-open for guided tours once per month.
Work to prepare for the return of regular visitors has included:
- refurbishing the Visitor Centre, including provision of new displays, a handling collection, and step-free access;
- refurbishing the Paint Store Café
- new displays at the colliery itself, creating an exhibition space
- maintenance work on the unique concrete headstocks.
Visits began again on Sunday 28 May, with guests including a group of former Staffordshire miners who had worked at Florence and Wolstanton Collieries, and relatives of those who worked at Foxfield.
The Foxfield Colliery is open for guided tours once per month until October. Visitors can access the site by road, and car parking is available.
The Foxfield Light Railway is run by volunteers, and runs trains for two-and-a-half miles on Sundays from spring to autumn. It has won various Enjoy Staffs Food and Tourism Awards in 2022 and 2023. It holds various events during the year, including its sell-out North Pole Express experience and its War Wheels Weekend.
Foxfield Railway Museum Manager, Anthony Dawson said “It is fantastic to see life breathed into the colliery thanks to AIM and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which means we can open once a month rather than just once per year for galas or other special events. I'm immensely proud of what the Museum Team have achieved in such a short time, and our visitors went away smiling and happy. We hope to build on the success and keep developing the colliery as a visitor attraction. Next on the cards is an ‘Overground Underground' experience so visitors get a sense of what it would have been like to work underground.”
