Freehold Pit

First marked on 1st edition OS of 1858 as a substantial complex of buildings with a shaft and a smithy. The earliest reference to the pit found was in 1852, when a boring was made ‘near Mr Cowen’s water mill proving the Five Quarters Seam in waste in Mr. Cowen’s Freehold Pit’ [VCH 2, 338]. It is not shown on the Tithe Map of 1838, and by 1896 the site is shown overgrown with trees and only the shaft - acting as an air shaft - survived. By 1914 (OS 3) even this had disappeared under the Summerhill Sand Pit.

No coherent surface traces are now visible, not even any visible brick or other structural debitage. The whole site appears to have been worked over by bulldozer.