Fishley colliery no1 was at SK 007 045 and records indicate working in 1865. However the 1883 OS described it as nos 1,2, and 3, the designations being changed as another three sites opened. It appears that originally the numbering related to shafts, but as the colliery expanded with other sites being opened, the numbering related to the sites. Today, all that remains is gruffy ground with obvious spoil within a clump of trees.
The No 2 site at 006 038 was originally the no 4 and is close to Freeths Bridge on the main Wyrley and Essington canal. No 2 is a later designation when other sites were opened. Today the site is occupied by farm buildings. Its likely that the designations originally referred to shafts, but later to each plant.
No 3 at SK 000 048 appears on the 1900 OS map under this designation, with two shafts, the easterly one at SK 00103 04948, and the westerly one at SK 00063 04900, and the plant connected to the original site (no 1) by a tramway. Today, it’s an interesting visit as it has quite a lot of features to be seen. There is the brick base of what was in all probability a chimney, with brick arched smoke flue on two sides, the western side extends to another square footing. Another square brick foundation to the east could be anything, but possibly a winding house for the eastern shaft. An iron dolly stand at the back may have supported a power train, or maybe a pulley for a steel rope being part of a haulage system. This is all speculative, what is to be seen today does not sit particularly well with the Ordnance Survey. The spoil tips are vast and extensive and this site may well have been the prime working. Of the shafts today, the westerly is a deep hollow with trees growing in it, of the easterly there is no sign.
No4 appears in 1900 immediately on the Lord Hays canal branch adjacent to Fishley no 3 bridge at SJ 997 041. Now Empty fields. Both the intermediate number 2 and the number 3 Fishley Bridges were demolished and the rubble together with that from the no 4 colliery used to fill in the canal.
No 5 appears on the 1913 map at SJ992 036 as disused, as were all Fishley Colliery sites by then. Now it’s a patch of woodland in the middle of Turnberry housing estate. Not difficult to see why not built on. Shaft was probably behind the “One man and his Dog” pub. Further in, obvious spoil dumps can be found.
The collieries went into liquidation in 1909 when all of the plant was sold by auction, an attempt to sell as a going concerned having failed. Plant included everything imaginable including 5 canal boats and an ambulance. Underground, all of the various sites connected and must have been a veritable maze of workings.
There was an air shaft just east of the Stafford Road and slightly south of the Turnberry Road traffic lights. It’s recoded that a pit deputy went missing while underground and was never found, so his body is still down there.