Black Heath was a house and coal mine located near the present day Midlothian area of Chesterfield County, Virginia.

During the 1910s or 1920s, the Black Heath house collapsed due to severe undermining from the numerous coal shafts and tunnels scattered around the property.

The mansion of Black Heath was large and grand and in its early days said to have been "surrounded by all the appurtenances of a home of wealth and taste.

[2] The grounds were beautifully managed in the Heth era and had various features such as a flower garden, an oak grove, a circular brick dovecote, stables, a barn, and other outbuildings.

The tract of Black Heath was near where coal was first discovered in North America in 1701 five miles northwest at Manakintowne in modern-day Powhatan County.

[10] The land being transferred contains this interesting description: "with all [illegible] the mines, minerals, quarries, coalpits or coal which therein lieth or which at any point heretofore hath been, or hereafter shall and may be found or discovered therein or in any part thereof."

The first time the name "Black Heath" was mentioned was in 1800, when James Ping was hired as the manager of the coal pits.

Although his family had immigrated to America relatively recently in the middle of the 18th century, Heth's children married people with historic Virginia names of Randolph, Harrison, and Pickett.

At the end of his life, he owned numerous plantations, including Black Heath, Curles, and Norwood and made provisions in his will for each of his four daughters to receive $10,000 each.

[14][15] In January 1821, Harry Heth died of consumption in Savannah, Georgia, where he had arrived after a stay in Europe for the improvement of his health.

She later married an influential Richmond businessman named Holden Rhodes in 1833 and moved to an estate which was later developed into Forest Hill Park.

John Heth had been a midshipman in the United States Navy during the War of 1812 but resigned in 1822 to marry Margaret Pickett and take a more active role within the family coal business.

John had eleven children with Margaret between 1823 and 1842, including the afore mentioned Henry Heth, who graduated from West Point in 1847 and served as a Confederate Major General during the Civil War.

Included in its assets By 1840, John owned most of the three thousand shares of stock and went to England to advertise for a new company to English investors.

"[17] John Heth's widow Margaret continued living at Black Heath until she died in 1850, around which point A. F. D. Gifford took up residence in the house.

[18] A. F. D. Gifford (A. F. D. is for Adolphus Frederick Danberry) was a widowed Englishman who initially came to Virginia as the attorney for the Chesterfield Coal and Iron Mining Company.

Before moving into Black Heath around the 1850s, Gifford lived in a house closer to Midlothian off of the Buckingham road between Falling Creek and the village.

[22] During the first couple years of the Civil War, Gifford traveled to England in an attempt to secure munitions for the Confederate Army.

Ball graduated from Jefferson Medical College and was a local doctor who served in the Midlothian area of Chesterfield County.

The deed to the former CC&IM Co. lands was then held by the Central Trust Company of New York from 1891 until 1938, when it was purchased by Ada Irene Jones for $150,000 in bonds.

The house remained in ruins for the next few decades before falling prey to either new mining operations, commercial waste dumping, or residential development.

[36] By December 8, NIE sued E. J. Flippo (the owner of the Black Heath, Harvie and Harris, and Barker and Branch tracts) for $150,000 in damages.

These pits remain to the present day and have resulted in a large swath of forest in Midlothian with no foreseeable development future because of the mine land usage.

A WPA Federal Writers' Project guidebook published in 1940 indicates that the site of the Black Heath house was in "dense undergrowth".

[47] By the second quarter of the 18th century, a number of private coal pits were operating on a commercial scale in a coalfield located in the area now known as Midlothian.

A Hessian doctor, after fighting in the American Revolutionary War, traveled around the new country in 1783 to 1784 and wrote about preliminary operations of the Black Heath mines.

U.S. President Thomas Jefferson had the White House in Washington, D.C. heated with the high quality coal from the Black Heath mines.

In 1827, Beverley Randolph had also been one of the organizers of the Chesterfield Railroad, a 12-mile gravity line built from Falling Creek to Manchester for the purpose of transporting coal to ships in the navigable portion of the James River for export.

In early 1836 a petition was made to the Virginia legislature asking "for a charter for a Rail-Road, from the Pits of the Black Heath Company of Colliers to James River, at some point above Bosher's Dam.

North of the railroad and south of State Route 711 (Robious Road), remnants of the Black Heath coal pits were extant in the 1960s.