Huntington has a rich coal mining heritage that stretches back hundreds of years.The village sits on the Cannock Chase coalfield,an extension of the South Staffs Coalfield that,as the name suggests clusters around Cannock Chase and the towns and villages that surround it.

The main Colliery in the village was Littleton.It was sunk in 1877 but the original sinkings were lost through flooding and new shafts were sunk in 1899-1902. From its chequered start, the Pit would become one of the largest in the Midlands,and the last Colliery left on Cannock Chase.

The first coal-mining operations were recorded on the Chase in 1298 at Cannock within the manor of the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and the Bishop also owned another coal-mine recorded on his manor at Longdon in 1306. These latter workings were probably situated within Beaudesert Old Park where there was a sea-coal mine recorded in 1367 and another two by the 1440's. After the exposed coal had been depleted the coal was mined relatively easily from shallow seams just beneath the surface, sometimes by means of 'drift mining' techniques wherever seams of coal were exposed in hillsides, but mainly by the sinking of 'bell pits' through the thin overlying rock strata into the coal seam beneath, which was then extracted from a circular area within a small radius around the vertical shaft entrance, only excavating the coal as far as safety would allow before abandoning the pit and starting another one close by. These near-surface methods of coal extraction were employed along the line of the coal outcrops throughout the Medieval period.

Prior to the industrial age the primary fuel for fires was wood, which was also the preferred material for use in building, and this had caused the woodland covering much of Staffordshire to become felled during the Medieval period and the remaining woodland to be tightly controlled. But by the late-Medieval times brick and tile had replaced wood and thatch as the primary building materials and these more-robust building materials in turn enabled the post-Medieval industrial expansion, which brought a greater need for ironstone and the coal with which to smelt it. In the later 16th century Staffordshire and particularly Cannock Chase was a primary source for both of these materials. The Paget family were managing a number of coalpits on their land in Beaudesert Old Park in the early-1560's, there was ironstone and coal mining recorded as taking place at Cheslyn Hay in the 1630's and in nearby Great Wyrley by 1642, and the recovery of several 17th century wooden mineworking skips at Essington would attest to mining operations here at the time. All of the coal retrieved from the Cannock Chase Coalfields during this period was of inferior quality to that recovered from the mines to the south of the Bentley Fault in the South Staffordshire Coalfields.

By the end of the 17th century coal had become the primary fuel for fires, both industrial and domestic, and this period was also to see the gradual decline of charcoal production on the periphery of the Chase which had for centuries fueled the small iron-works of the Medieval age but were now unable to meet the increasing needs of the rapidly expanding ironworking industry which were now being supplied by new coal coking plants; all significant charcoal production on the Chase had ceased by the mid-18th century. The advent of the Trent and Mersey Canal through the area north-east of the Chase in 1777 was to provide an easy method for the distribution for coal recovered from the well-established mines around Brereton (just south-east of Rugeley), with which it was linked via a tramway, and this transport link was to provide the Cannock Chase Coalfield with the impetus to buid its first deep mine, accessing the hitherto undeveloped Concealed Measures.

The Brereton Collieries (1791-1960)

These collieries exploited the deep measures at the northern tip of the Cannock Chase Coalfield. Disused Shaft west of Chetwynd's Coppice, Brereton - now a car park. Disused Shafts, Brereton Hayes Wood, Lea Hall Colliery, Rugeley (1948-1990) The opening of this particular pit was to draw large numbers of miners from the depleted coalfields of Durham in the north-east down to Rugeley where they were housed on a purpose-built housing estate (the Pear Tree Estate). Amongst these men was my grandfather George White, accompanied by his family which included my father William, then a teenager. Disused Workings, formerly West Cannock No.5, a.k.a. "Tackeroo" - now the Cannock Chase Enterprise Centre, Littleton Colliery, Huntington - Disused Shafts south of Stony Brook, Fairoak Valley, Brindley Heath - Disused Mine east of Dimmins Dale, Fairoak Valley, Brindley Heath - Cannock Wood Colliery, Rawnsley - now the Cannock Wood Industrial Estate, Disused Pit south of Gentleshaw Hill, Cannock Wood Opencast Workings, Cannock Wood - also Ironstone Workings Hednesford Hills?, now Museum and Heritage Center, Littleworth Colliery, Wimblebury -Littlewood, Cheslyn Hay, Hawks Green?, Cannock - now the Hawk's Green Industrial Estate and Mill Green Bird Sanctuary.

There's more to mining than just social history!