Memories Of Sherwood Colliery.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ต.ค. 2024
- Subscribe to my youtube channel for 220+ coal mine tributes and counting, In 1901 a tender for sinking two shafts for the Sherwood Colliery Company was submitted by mining contractors Charles Walker and John F. Eaton from Doncaster, Yorkshire, in which they agreed to provide all the materials and equipment necessary to construct and complete the job.
Operations at the new site called Sherwood Colliery started on Whit Tuesday and the manager Mr Fryer turned the first sod. There were about 50 men employed in clearing and preparing the ground for sidings close to the railway in the parish of Mansfield Woodhouse near to the boundary with Mansfield Borough.
Sinking operations began and at a formal opening ceremony performed on Monday 10th February 1902 a large metal bucket was used to raise a load of soil from what was to be the location of the upshaft. The dignitaries in attendance included Mr Ellis, Mr Frederick John Turner, land agent to the Duke of Portland and Mr Jesse Hind, the clerk of Nottinghamshire County Council. Of note was that the nearby residents of Woodhouse Road were displeased by the noise of the blasting.
There were many sinkers involved in the operation and as yet we know the names of little more than a handful of them. They include Mr Dann and Mr Lovely, Robert Kemp, Mick O’Callaghan, Robert Bilton (Sinker Bob) and Edmund Simmonds and Albert Woods.
Within weeks of the start of sinking operations, tragedy had struck. On the evening of Tuesday 22nd April 1902 a very serious accident happened at Sherwood Colliery. Sinkers Albert Wood of Mansfield Woodhouse and Edmund Simmonds of Mansfield were both in Shaft One when a 30 pound balance weight which had been attached to the doors closing the top of the shaft, fell down a distance of about 35 yards on them. Albert was killed outright and Edmund died of his injuries the next morning at about 4am.
Operations continued and the first coal was reached in the September of 1902. But they would have to sink much further to reach the main coal seams.
1903, one year after operations had begun and some 430 yards down, the sinkers reached coal seams measuring more than five feet in depth and signalling this effort a flag was flown from the headstocks.
Both shafts were 20 feet in diameter and mainly lined with bricks. The shafts were equipped with steam driven winding gear until being replaced with electrical driven ones in 1982 and 1983. There were up to eight boilers at different times through the years and the boiler chimney was eight foot in diameter and 150 feet high.
The first production was from the Top Hard Seam in 1903 and this was worked until exhausted in 1959. The Dunsil Seam was developed to supplement output and was opened in 1916 and worked through until 1957. From 1959 production came from the Deep Soft Seam and later from the Deep Hard, Piper, Yard and Black Shale Seams.
Mr Ellis officially opened the pithead baths in 1934. Also that year the canteen, swimming baths and fully equipped medical treatment centre were opened at the colliery. The swimming baths was subsequently taken over by Mansfield Corporation in 1966.
Overhead lines were installed to carry buckets of rubble from the colliery which then passed over Debdale Lane to the coal tip. Eventually the buckets were unable to cope with the amount and it was replaced by a 6ft wide gantry-style bridge with a 28ft span built across Debdale Lane which carried a rubble conveyor. That gantry was subsequently removed in the early 1980s.
In 1975 Sherwood Colliery miners set a world speed record for tunnelling underground. They completed 226.7 yards of roadway measuring 14ft by 10ft. The new tunnel some 1,200 yards long was scheduled to be a roadway for 108’s face.
The men in the Deep Hard/Piper on 120’s coalface created a record, producing 27,461 tonnes of coal during five days in the week ending 22nd May 1978 - the highest tonnage ever produced from a single face in a British coal mine.
In 1980 work began on a scheme at Sherwood Colliery which cost in the region of £5m to improve the ventilation and haulage facilities underground.
Two years later a £6m scheme which provided new access tunnels and a storage bunker underground was completed.
Sherwood Colliery then smashed the European production record for thin seam mining just a month after Mansfield Colliery set it. The miners produced 20,732 tonnes from one conventional coal face in a seam just one metre high.
Then the bombshell hit, British Coal confirmed in April 1991 that Sherwood Colliery would close within the next two years. In fact it was less than a year, for it was then announced that the colliery would close at the end of January 1992. A core workforce was kept on to carry out salvage and safety work and demolition of the headstocks, before the shafts were sealed and the site closed off. Sherwood colliery sadly recorded 96 fatalities during its ninety year history.
Great music. Long live the memories of the men and women of Sherwood Pit.
Great Video, Great Music, Great Memories
Glad you enjoyed it
Just brought so many good memories back a lot of the face's I know some no longer with us R.I.P 😪
RIP Tommy the last pit pony at Sherwood who retired around 1965.
I used to go to the swimming baths somewhere very close to the colliery in the early 70's as a kid.
One of my seven pits but my favourite. Loved it there.
Both of my grandads and their dad’s before them moved to Mansfield Woodhouse to work at Sherwood
Best mates I ever had worked at sherwood both men and officials snodge peck
It was a great time to be in Mansfield - the pits brought money in and gave jobs - it’s dead now - I knew some great lads and some complete arses - but I learnt my loyalties in the pit and team work
The best
Forgot about the football team
My great uncle was locked out of that pit for trying to form a union