New data reveals latest mineral workings around Great Britain and Northern Ireland
The newest release of BGS BritPits provides information on an additional 6500 surface and underground mineral workings.
01/04/2025 By BGS Press
The latest release of the BGS BritPits dataset covers more than 260 000 mineral workings in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
The data includes active, inactive, dormant and ceased sites, as well as a range of mineral operations including mines, quarries, onshore oil and gas fields, wharfs and rail depots handling mineral products and industrial processes. Each entry describes an onshore mineral working in terms of its name, operational status, geographical location, Mineral Planning Authority, operator, the geology worked and the mineral commodity produced.
This data is of particular value to organisations with an interest in the location of mineral extraction sites and their potential for further use. For example, BritPits data has been supplied to:
- national and local governments, for use in planning and statistical studies
- non-governmental organisations, for environmental and conservation planning
- commercial organisations, for analysis of resource potential and legacy operations
BritPit locations. BGS © UKRI – Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2025
BGS BritPits is available in three different packages:
Two licenced packages are available in GIS and CSV formats.
The full dataset includes all the entries of the BGS BritPits database, including historic sites. This data is also available for specific mineral planning areas (MPAs). The full dataset is available as a GIS or CSV format and can be accessed as a Web Map Service (WMS) layer or via the BGS Onshore GeoIndex.
The AID data package is a subset of the full dataset and includes only the active, inactive and dormant mines and quarries (around 5200 entries).
Index level information is available to view via the BGS GeoIndex and access as a WMS link under the Open Government Licence (OGL). This is based on the full BritPits dataset but contains index-level information only on the name, status and location of the working. More detailed information on commodities, MPAs, operator, etc. are reserved for the licensed version.
Further information is available through the BGS BritPits dataset page or by contacting the digital data team.
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