Coventry Colliery is in the village of Keresley on the outskirts of the city of Coventry. The mine was also known as Keresley Pit.
The colliery's main shafts are just outside the north-east boundary of Keresley on Newland House Farm in Exhall, but the buildings, the branch railway, and other workings have straddled the boundary on to part of the former open fields called Leightons. The first shaft reached the seam of the Warwickshire Thick Coal in 1917, and it was estimated that there could be an annual production of 1½ million tons for at least a century. The Coventry Colliery has been said to be one of the most modern in the country.
New houses were built for the miners. They were good homes by the standards of the time, with inside toilets; unusual for working class housing of that era. In 1924 a miners' social club was formed.
In the 1950s miners from other areas (South Wales, Scotland, Northeast England, Ireland and Eastern Europe came to work in Coventry Colliery.
Coventry Colliery, Coventry’s last coal mine, closed in 1991. It reopened as a private pit, one of the first in the UK (following nationalisation of coalmines in 1947), the following year, but in 1996 it closed forever when its new owner, Coal Investments, went out of business.
The Homefire smokeless fuel plant, built in the 1960s, shared the site of Coventry Colliery made a dramatic and imposing structure on the Keresley skyline. The Homefire Plant closed in 2000.
These closures were of course a severe blow to the community but from 1999 a new business park called Prologis Park or Keresley Park was built on the site and is bringing new life to Keresley. A Country Park was also created.
The following tells the story of the recent installation of the pit wheel at the former Coventry Colliery site (extract from Coventry Evening Telegraph, April 2008):-
A giant pit wheel which helped keep the home fires burning in Coventry and Warwickshire is being mounted as a permanent tribute to the men who once toiled underground.
The 22ft diameter wheel, weighing 14 tonnes, once formed part of the winding gear at the old Coventry Colliery, in Keresley End, and was a familiar and imposing landmark high above the village.
It has been sliced in half and placed at the entrance to the new Prologis Park, which stands on the site of the old pit and the nearby Homefire Plant.