| Administrative History | Reverend D'Ewes Coke was the main beneficiary of the will of Sarah Lillyman, who had taken on his guardianship after losing his parents at a young age. This left him land and mineral rights in Pinxton and Brookhill Hall. He also bought the mineral rights for the rest of the parish of Pinxton. With the ownership of these mineral rights, he established Messrs Coke and Co. in 1788, to work the coal. Profits he made from the company funded a branch line of the Cromford Canel to Pinxton to make it easier to transport coal further south. Upon the Reverend’s death in 1811, his son, John, took over the business. Instead of using the canal, he preferred to develop the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway to support the collieries and his own recently established Pinxton Porcelain Factory.
In 1847, the Coke family went into partnership with Colonel James Salmond and George Robinson to create the company Pinxton Collieries Ltd. In 1844 Colonel Salmond had begun working the colliery at Langton (just over the border in Nottinghamshire but close to Pinxton). He had married into the Coke family and ran Langton Colliery for the company. In 1899 Pinxton Collieries was registered as a limited company under the style of Pinxton Coal Company Limited. In 1908 Brookhill Colliery was sunk, and over the next few years it would become the centre for coal winding and surface coal faciltities for all the Pinxton pits.
The collieries of Langton, Brookhill and Pinxton were transferred into the control of the National Coal Board in 1947 as a result of the nationalisation of the coal industry. |