| Entry Type | Corporate |
| Corporate Name | Bolsover Colliery |
| Parent Body | Bolsover Colliery Company (1889-1947) |
| National Coal Board (1947-1993) |
| Place | Bolsover |
| Place | Bolsover |
| Epithet | coal mine |
| Dates | 1889-1993 |
| History | Bolsover Colliery was about a mile to the west of the castle and was the first pit to be developed by the Bolsover Colliery Company. It was opened as the company's first colliery, following a lease being taken out from the Duke of Portland in 1889 and the coal seam was reached by 1891. This lease created problems in early stages due to infringements on other pieces of the land owned by the Duke. The seams worked were the Tupton, Top Hard and Threequarter seams. The Blackshale seam became the focus of production after the coall strikes in the 1980s. Bolsover was one of the first colleries in the country to achieve the production target of 3,000 tons of coal per day.
In the 1940s, a new screening plant, including coal washers was constructed, alongside a Dry Cleaning Plant. An aerial ropeway was also installed in 1943 to move refuse to a dumping site on the side of Chesterfield Road.
Railway sidings were provided for the pit and these connected to lines on both London and North Eastern Railway and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. There were also brickworks adjourning the colliery. The bricks made here supplied the pit and the worker’s housing scheme. The brickworks were replaced by pithead baths after their closure in the 1920s. In its heyday, around 20,000 bricks a day were being produced.
The company provided the model village ‘New Bolsover’ as housing for their workers and this scheme would be replicated across all of their 6 sites. Building work commenced in 1891 and finished in 1894. The village included 194 houses and a local school. This school was also the Headquarters for the Bolsover St. John’s Ambulance. Sports provided for the community included cricket, football, hockey and bowls. A tub system was used to send house coal down to the pit village and sent coal spoil back to be the colliery disposed of. A local constable was also provided by the colliery to ensure safety of the workers and their families.
During the Second World War, the colliery raised enough money to pay for 2 spitfires. The miners donated to their own fund, as well as giving a penny in every 10 shillings they earned to a fund created by Mrs Shepley of Holmesfield, in memory of men who had died in her own family. Sadly only one of these planes survived the war and it is not known what happened to it following its dismissal from service in 1947. The other went down with its pilot over Dungeness in Kent.
The parish church of St Mary & St Laurence was a large part of the local mining community and a church hall was built as a meeting place for various clubs and societies connected to Bolsover Colliery. Today a National Union of Mineworkers banner taken on protests during strikes and 2 miners’ lamps are kept in the church of a reminder of this past.
The colliery closed in 1993.
KEY EVENTS
1889: Land first leased from the Duke of Portland
1901: Coal first reached
1947: Nationalisation
1993: Closed |
| Source | 'Bolsover Colliery', https://www.oldminer.co.uk/bolsover.html
'Bolsover Colliery: 25th anniversary of closure', http://www.miningheritage.co.uk/bolsover-colliery-closure-25th-anniversary/
‘Bolsover Spitfire’, http://www.oldminer.co.uk/spitfires.html
Bolsover Colliery Company Limited, Bolsover: Jubilee Souvenir, 1889-1939 (1939)
Bolsover Colliery Company Limited, Bolsover: The Company and its Coal (1940)
Bolsover Colliery Company Limited, The Monthly News: A Social Magazine for the Employees of the Bolsover Colliery Company Limited, no 5 (May 1923)
Bolsover Parish Council, Mining and Bolsover Church leaflet (2015)
Bridgewater, A. N., North Derbyshire Collieries (2009) https://www.aditnow.co.uk/documents/Doe-Lea-Coal-Mine/North20Derbyshire20Collieries20Small20Update.pdf
Haigh, B., One Hundred Years of Mining, Bolsover Colliery, 1889-1989 (1989)
Northern Mine Research Society, Bolsover Colliery, https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/coal-mining-in-the-british-isles/derbynotts/chesterfield/bolsover/
Pegge, B., Challenge and Change: Reflections by Members of the Community and Visitors on the Demise of the Colliery and the Process of Regeneration in Bolsover, 1984-2007
Weiss, M., Coal Mines Remembered 2 (2011) |
| Authorised Form of Name | Bolsover; Bolsover Colliery; 1889-1993; coal mine |
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