British Geological Survey releases new version of BGS BritPits

01 April, 2025

Extraction of Fuller’s earth by Steetley Minerals’ at Woburn Sands, Bedfordshire. Photo: BGS © UKRI

Additional data reveals latest mineral workings around Great Britain and Northern Ireland

THE British Geological Survey’s newest release of BGS BritPits provides information on an additional 6,500 surface and underground mineral workings. The latest release of the 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, geology worked, and the mineral commodity produced.

This information will be of particular value to organizations with an interest in the location of mineral extraction sites and their potential for further use. For example, BritPits data have been supplied to: national and local governments, for use in planning and statistical studies; non-governmental organizations, for environmental and conservation planning; and commercial organizations, for analysis of resource potential and legacy operations.

BritPits location map. Image: 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 are also available for specific mineral planning areas (MPAs). The full dataset in GIS or CSV format 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 5,200 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 BGS digital data team.