Directory of Mines and Quarries

These directories provide information on working mines and quarries in the United Kingdom. Summary details of rock types or minerals, geological formation, location and owner or operator are provided.

The British Geological Survey has been collecting information about working mines and quarries in the United Kingdom since its formation in 1835, and the current publication, the Directory of Mines and Quarries (DMQ), is still produced at regular intervals.

Recently, the DMQ has been derived from a database called BritPits which holds information on both active and ceased mineral workings, their geographic location, address, Operator, Mineral Planning Authority, site geology, mineral commodities produced and their subsequent end-uses. The data is held in a relational database using an Oracle server and a Microsoft Access front-end. There are over 100,000 records in the database and the number will continue to rise due to systematic surveying of former mineral sites in the UK.

Data is gathered from a number of sources: BGS's own extensive records, Mineral Planning Authorities (MPAs), the minerals industry and various central Government Departments and Agencies (CLG, Coal Authority, etc). BGS believes that BritPits is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date sources available. The database can be used for many purposes: mailing lists, route planning, market intelligence/analysis, and resource planning, and data has been supplied to a wide range of customers.

The BGS can supply data on active mineral workings as either the printed Directory of Mines and Quarries or as digital database extracts in spreadsheet formats. It can also supply the data in GIS formats as ARC Shapefiles. A digital index to the locations of all the currently active mines and quarries can be viewed on the BGS website in the GeoIndex under the geology section.