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Along the Moors - Granville Nature Reserve
Draining Away
By the end of the 1600s, mining was a well established industry in the Donnington Wood area, although its scope was limited, both physically and financially, by the inadequate drainage of shafts sunk to exploit the coal seams. Many of the mines in the coalfield measured little more than 60 to 100 feet in depth and surface supplies of coal in the area were rapidly exhausted by the early 18th Century… creating serious problems for allied industries, such as lime-working, that relied on the mineral to fire its kilns.
While the Donnington Wood coalfield bore little resemblance to the Weald Moors, what the two seemingly incongruous areas did have in common was shared ownership. Both belonged, in large part, to the Leveson Gower family, whose reforming zeal was equally evident in the industrial quarter of their estate as it would later become on the moors. Due to poor drainage, none of the mines on the Lilleshall estate were able to turn a profit in the first half of the 18th Century, leading Earl Gower to go into partnership with his land agent John Gilbert (and his brother Thomas) in 1764, with the aim of utilising technological advances to improve the extraction of mineral reserves on his estate.