FOXCOTE COLLIERY

Factfile

Layout name: Foxcote Colliery

Scale/gauge: 2FS / / 2mm:1ft scale

Size: 5ft 3in x 2ft

Era/region: 1920s Somerset & Dorset

Location: Somerset (fictitious)

Layout type: Fiddleyard to fiddleyard

When most people think of Somerset, it tends to be cheese, cider apples and beautiful countryside that come to mind. What is often forgotten is that, until just shy of 50 years ago, Somerset had a thriving coal mining industry with numerous small pits set amidst these green, rolling hills.

Coal was mined in Somerset for over 500 years, from the mid-15th century until the last tubs were raised, at Writhlington, near Radstock, in September 1973. The Somerset coalfield stretched from Cromhall in the north to the Mendip Hills in the south and from Bath in the east to Nailsea in the west, a total area of around 240 square miles. Most of the pits in the coalfield were concentrated around the Cam and Wellow Brooks, the Nettlebridge Valley and, in particular, Radstock and Farrington Gurney – there were 16 pits in the Radstock area alone, one of which was Foxcote.

The pits were grouped together geographically, with clusters often connected underground, working the same coal seams and under the same ownership. Many also shared the same trackways and tramways, which, in the early years, fed the Somerset Coal Canal or later, the Somerset and Dorset (S&D) and Great Western railways and their successors.

The S&D was very much the poor relation when it came to traffic. In 1925, for example,, called the period of intense change from the mid-18th century, a miniindustrial revolution, “two short centuries which turned a predominantly quiet, agricultural community into a frenetically harsh township, which witnessed the arrival of miners, canals, railways and roads with all their various trappings, both physical and social. Suddenly, there was poverty, disease drunkenness and disorder in plenty…”