Mearns Pit ( subsequent hamlet)

 hamlet, interesting place, coal mine

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A small hamlet once the site of Mearns Colliery.
Mearns Pit was the subject of 3 leases drawn-up in 1783; one to sink the shaft (4' 6'' dia. X 279ft deep), one to search and finally, one to make levels. The Freeshare owner was the Popham Estates, and there were 8 men named in the partnership (including Jacob Mogg, John Crang, & William Savage - who repeatedly feature in various coalmining ventures in the Cam Valley).
In the Somersetshire Coal Canal deposited plans of 1793, tramroad extensions are referred to from Mearns to 5 other pits, though it is likely that only the dramway to Woody Heighgrove was (probably) constructed ( as there is both evidence of its route together with recollections passed down generationally that it did once exist).
This pit was a modest one in relation to output / extent of the workings, with a reported weekly output as little as an average of 16 tons per day in 1792.
A Joseph Hill purchased shares in the undertaking in both 1802 and 1807 but sold them back to Jacob Mogg when the Lessors required that the Partners abandon the colliery in 1817, and begin mining at Woody (or Wooddy) Heighgrove. The Transfer Document was dated 8-11-1817.
This small pit had a much more significant 'claim to fame' than its sheer scale in that it was at Mearns that William Smith surveyed the strata and workings in 1792.
He was later to become known as William 'Strata' Smith, the so-called 'Father of English Geology' after he set down the very first discussion paper on Stratigraphy, based upon his work and the observations he had noted at Mearns Colliery.
This work not only profoundly influenced the developments in the rest of the Somerset Coalfield during the 19th C, but led to a whole new specialism in the UK & world-wide.
Mearns may well have had limited importance in terms of scal / output, but it had a tremendous impact more generally!
Ref:- Down & Warrington, Bulley, Radstock Museum & supposition.