Mine Shafts

Lauralou79

I'm from nearby(ish) and lots of areas in the region have a coal mining past and still have housing and house sales. I guess it's personal choice on how comfortable you feel with the information ( as long as the lender is ok)
As for children playing in the garden, surely if their house is close to mines/shafts then other areas they frequent will be too. There's a risk with everything we do in this day and age.

LEJC

PasturesNew wrote: »

I have 2nd hand experience... my parents were looking at a wonderful bungalow to retire to - it had a shaft. They pulled out and bought elsewhere.... so I watched it.

Some people said "well it won't be your problem will it ..." indicating it'd be fine to live in, but might struggle to resell in the future, after they'd died.

It was bought by a man in his 70s or so - and some years later he was forced to move out as the house became unstable.

It ended up being bought by professional builders at half it's value without the shaft, who then demolished it and capped/filled the shaft and built a new build property on it. They tried to sell it, but it didn't sell - it's probably rented out now.

The man who had to move out spent his later years arguing with his wife about it (who moved back to their previous area/300 miles away), without a home, moving here and there and about as he tried to sort out what to do with his unusable home.

My understanding is that any potential purchaser is advised to obtain a mining report prior to purchasing if the property that they are interested in is within a mining area.
It is however voluntary but as part of the report it includes an indemnity that ensures any subsidence etc is rectified by the coal authority.

I can therefore only reiterate the potential importance of purchasing a report....I assume the homeowners you recount the story of may not have,hence the sad situation they may have found themselves in.

sultanabran

If you go to http://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/coalauthority/home.html you can see the mines in your area.

Rileybaby

I'm fairly local and the mining report recently came back on my house that there was a shaft 10-15 m away. I used a local solicitor who said that it was normal nothing to worry about and IF anything were to happen the cola board would pick up the tab.

My bank also didn't have a problem. When discussed with the mortgage advisor sh said that 30-50%of this area a very close to a mins shaft.

Socksey

I had something similar.... there is an adit under my bathroom.... got the extra mining/coal reports. There was a mortgage on it from the person that I bought it from. No historical issues etc. Bank ended up being happy. Have now lived there 5 years and no issues.

missprice

The area I live in is not well known for mining, yet wiki and searches tell me there were over 800 known mines in this area from the 1800s to about 1960 and countless unknown mines. Yet I never heard of any sink holes and these houses go for a good price for the area. I think they are all built on to some kind of concrete slab/platform thing, to do with the risk of sinkholes? Possibly. No one nearby has ever mentioned any worries about mines, damp yes, but never mines.

missprice

sultanabran wrote: »

If you go to http://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/coalauthority/home.html you can see the mines in your area.

You are a star. I just looked and found 3 mine entries on my street.

LEJC

missprice wrote: »

You are a star. I just looked and found 3 mine entries on my street.

it's actually quite fascinating to have a look at and see who's got what isn't it?

missprice

LEJC wrote: »

it's actually quite fascinating to have a look at and see who's got what isn't it?

Really oddly a few weeks ago I was discussing mines and bomb holes* and where the entries may be, just out of curiosity. Did a Google but no luck, now to find all I needed was this interactive map. Am stupidly happy this thread came up.

*I am told they are bomb holes, but not convinced it's just local lore, yet to prove it somehow. Not figured out how yet unless someone knows of a map that shows where bombs landed? #livesinhope

davidmcn

missprice wrote: »

Not figured out how yet unless someone knows of a map that shows where bombs landed? #livesinhope

There's this site for London, not sure if there's anything similar covering the rest of the country:

http://www.bombsight.org