Brierley Hill, Dudley Wood and Netherton were all held under lease from the Dudley estate.
A small pit like the Racecourse Colliery would usually start up in the following way: a few men would get together and rent the mineral rights from whoever owned them; in this area that was usually the Earl of Dudley.
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Alternatively, the Earl of Dudley could mine the coal himself and appoint an agent or a manager to run his pit for him.
Construction had begun 1828 following the donation of land from the Earl of Dudley.
James Earl Jones | Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex | Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma | Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener | Earl | Dudley | Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts | Earl of Derby | Earl Warren | Earl of Pembroke | Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer | Earl of Warwick | Dudley Moore | Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford | Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby | Earl of Shrewsbury | William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham | Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester | Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick | Earl of Leicester | John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon | Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex | Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester | Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer | Earl of Devon | Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig | My Name Is Earl | Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon | Earl Scruggs | Earl of March |
; Viscountess Ednam, the wife of Viscount Ednam (heir to the Earl of Dudley) and a daughter of Cromartie Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 4th Duke of Sutherland; and Mrs Loeffler, a well-known society hostess, along with the pilot, Lt. Col. George Lochart Henderson and the assistant pilot, Mr C. D. Shearing.