Londonderry

The Londonderry Mine
WA Now and Then 1

Demographics

Region: Goldfields-Esperance
LGA: Coolgardie
Other Names: Golden Hole
Industry: Mining
Date established: 1892
Date gazetted: 1895
Date closed: 1899
Open Street Map: 31.072°S 121.116°E
What3Words: ///crawler.consoles.stature

History

Londonderry was located about 20km South West of Coolgardie in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia.

Gold was discovered in the area in 1894 by a party of prospectors, one of whom named the find after his home town of Londonderry. Lord Fingall took over the find in 1894 but the gold soon petered out. The townsite was gazetted in 1895.2 By 1898 the town had a population of 220 (200 males and 20 females).3

This mine site, known as the Golden Hole, was the centre of the Londonderry share scandal in the 1890s which is infamous in the share broking world and a part of Australian mining folklore. It sparked one of the greatest gold share failures of the goldrushes; a salted mine was onsold to Lord Fingall and others who floated the Londonderry mine base on a £700,000 capitalisation. The mine proved of little value and the shares plummeted.4

Timeline

  • 1894 : Gold discovered
  • 1895 : Mining commenced and townsite gazetted
  • 1899 : Company liquidated and town abandoned

Stories

In March 1894 a party of prospectors (Mills, Gardner, Carter, Dawson, Elliott and Huxley) equipped with a spring cart, two horses, some tools and limited food were returning to Coolgardie after an unsuccessful trip. They intended to sell their gear and disband but on reaching a spot about 13 miles south of Coolgardie they stopped to feed their horses at an area where there was some green grass growing. While they were there they searched the spot for any signs of gold.

One of the men, Elliott, noticed a quartz reef that looked as though earlier prospectors had been working on it. He knocked a couple of pieces off the reef and found almost unbelievable quantities of gold. By noon the following day 2000 ounces of gold had been gathered. Elliott and Mills then journeyed in to Coolgardie with a small amount of gold to buy more equipment and supplies but made no mention of what they had discovered. They had pegged out three large leases but did not make any formal application and waited long past the time allowed by the Mining Act to disclose their find. They built a hut made of logs in which to securely store their gold and as each day passed they found more and more. One large specimen named Big Ben weighed 250 ounces and was 30% gold.5

After more trips in to Coolgardie rumours of their find began to circulate and it wasn’t long before thousands of men flocked to the area and began pegging out claims. As Elliott, Mills and Huxley had not applied for leases, two of the areas they had pegged out were ‘jumped’ by other prospectors leading to prolonged legal battles over the sites. The claim jumpers eventually won and the original discoverers were left with just one lease. Luckily for them this was the source of the gold and the two leases they did not get proved to be worthless.

In October 1894 Lord Fingall took a five month option over the lease for 180,000 pounds cash plus 100,000 in shares. The option did not allow for any work to be done on what had become known as The Golden Hole but an iron door was built over the entrance and Warden Finnerty affixed his seal to the lock. A company was floated in England and then a crosscut 50 foot shaft was dug through the lode. It initially revealed very rich specimen stone but that soon began to run out. 6

In January 1895 in front of a large crowd of people, the iron door was opened and after the initial festivities the real work began. Huge sums were expended on machinery and development but apart from a few pockets of gold here and there, nothing substantial was found. In 1899 the world famous company, that had been sponsored and financed by the aristocracy of England, went into liquidation.

The original estimate of the worth of the Golden Hole was £250,000, but ultimately the real value was about £5,000.7 The Londonderry Gold Mine (Limited) raised £700,000 from punters. After promoters and the prospectors took their vendor shares and expenses, only £50,000 was left in working capital, but that was regarded as adequate for such a rich mine. Except there wasn’t a mine. The gold ran out quickly and all that was left was worthless quartz.

Many years later suspicions arose that the prospectors had driven a shaft under the hole, found there was no more gold and then back filled the tunnel and built their camp over the tunnel entrance. This has never been proven. It does not appear to have been deliberate, but rather a freak of nature – a rich patch in an otherwise worthless reef.

Townsite Plan

Townsite Plan of Londerry
State Records Office of Western Australia 8

Sources

  1. WA Now and Then, n.d. The Folklore of Western Australia – The Londonderry. Excerpt from book The Folklore of Western Australia retrieved 23 Nov 2025 from https://www.wanowandthen.com/Folklore/0169.html ↩︎
  2. Landgate, 2022. Londonderry. Retrieved from http://www0.landgate.wa.gov.au/maps-and-imagery/wa-geographic-names/name-history/historical-town-names on 22 Jul 2025. ↩︎
  3. POPULATION OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. (1898, April 22). Western Mail (Perth, WA : 1885 – 1954), p. 20. Retrieved July 22, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33153441 ↩︎
  4. Inherit 2017. Londonderry Town. Retrieved from https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/details/249dd18f-fab0-4fe4-94df-569497206f82 on 22 Jul 2025. ↩︎
  5. Trevor Sykes, 2014. Australian Financial Review: If you spy an empty stock start running. Retrieved on 22 Jul 2025 from https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/if-you-spy-an-empty-stock-start-running-20140801-j6yd9 ↩︎
  6. WA Now and Then. The folklore of Western Australia: The Londonderry. Retrieved on 22 Jul 2025 from https://www.wanowandthen.com/Folklore/0169.html ↩︎
  7. THE STORY OF THE LONDONDERRY. (1907, November 10). The Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA : 1898 – 1929), p. 9. Retrieved July 22, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article211344413 ↩︎
  8. State REcords Office of WA, 2025. Londonderry Townsite [Tally No. 504652]. Digital image of totpgraphic chart retrieved 23 Nov 2025 from https://archive.sro.wa.gov.au/uploads/r/srowa/d/8/d86cb83bf5836155b09d9ff4ba6cd992a828a7f88fbc4e44d17fcd552cd9692f/Cons_5698_Item_1053.jpg ↩︎

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