Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire & Laboratory and Old Explosives Store, Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Between September 2004 and November 2005, Oxford Archaeology (OA) carried out an archaeological watching brief at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire (NGR: SU 8839 5326). The work was commissioned by Atkins Heritage as part of the Chatterley Whitfield Regeneration Project. A watching brief during the excavation of test pits revealed the foundations of building number 12 (the main office block) and evidence of ground reduction and/or deposition of made ground prior to the construction of building number 12. A partially exposed concrete slab which may represent an earlier phase of building was also recorded. A later watching brief during the installation of new sewers exposed the ground floor and walls of the former lower laboratory building and layers of made ground over the north-east corner of the site, and also those associated with the access road embankment. During the excavation of a cable trench an earlier road and yard surface was exposed south-west of the main office.

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Oxford Archaeology has undertaken a programme of building investigation and recording on a pair of adjacent buildings at Chatterely bWhitfield Colliery in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. The main building is a former laboratory which was constructed in the 1930's while the other structure is beliebed to have been a former explosives store that may have been adapted to serve as an electrical sub-station and still houses an electrical transformer. The work was concentrated principally on the laboratory building which has two principal construction phases but whose internal layout appears to have changed relatively little following the mine closure in 1977. The buildings are to be converted to a new use as part of the wider redevelopment of the former colliery site. The interiors will be cleared during the refurbishment and therefore a programme of building recording has preceeded works. In addition a basement under part of the laboratory building was exposed during construction works and this was also recorded.