The Early Beginnings

No-one knows for certain when coal was first mined in Shipley. It may go back 1000 years or even earlier. The first known deposits of coal were probably in the form of outcrops which meant that coal could easily be picked up on the surface.

One of the earliest of the Rufford Charters records how Hugh de Muskham gave land at Shipley to the Abbey. The Charter includes:-

"my land called Grenesweit with all its pertinences in woods and in open fields and all other things, namely in minerals and in pasture, and common rights of mining and wood-cutting in Scipleia (Shipley)"

Although not used much as a source of fuel during mediaeval times there is evidence that it was closely guarded since the Ilkeston Court Rolls lists several cases of theft of coal from the Shipley estate.

Underground Mining

The Leche family commenced the commercial exploitation of coal in Shipley in 1706 when 305 tons were mined. This was 2 years before Abraham Darby set up his coke works at Coalbrookdale and signalled the start of the Industrial Revolution. The first underground pits were probably in the shape of bell pits. Mining of coal on a large scale commenced in 1734 when the estate passed into the hands of the (Miller) Mundy family, and for the next 200 years coal mining, of one form or another, was to form the chief economic activity in Shipley.

The 19th Century

The development of coal led to the building of the Nutbrook Canal, with its reservoirs, Shipley Lake and Mapperley Reservoir, and railway links to transport the coal to as far afield as Leicester and London. In 1830 shafts were sunk to the Waterloo and Deep Hard seams, 100 yards and 240 yards respectively - two of the lowest seams mined in the area. From this date until the peak of the 1930s there was steady development with the Shipley pits and the associated Manners collieries at Ilkeston producing coal for the house, steam and manufacturing markets. In 1832, the local coal masters were forced to commence planning what became the Midland Railway Company and by 1872 Shipley was sending over 90,000 tons annually by rail to be sold on the London Coal Exchange.

The Life of the Miner

Mining was a difficult and hazardous occupation and involved long hours of work in dirty, damp conditions. In the 1840s boys as young as 5 and 6 were employed in the mines attending to the wind doors in the shaft. Attempts to organize trade unions were fiercely resisted. The miners were both poorly- paid and exploited by the "truck" system - a payment of wages in the form of vouchers that could be used only in certain shops - and the "butty" system in which work was contracted out by the coal-owner and thus a share of the profits went to a middle-man.

After 1842 legislation and technical innovation gradually improved safety conditions, although the miners suffered from periodic recessions and resistance from employers, such as Miller Mundy, to a reduction in working hours. In February 1881, 1000 Ilkeston miners employed at Mundy's collieries came out on strike in an unsuccessful attempt to resist an increase in working hours. In 1890 Derbyshire miners were working on average a 9 or 10 hour day.

The End

In 1920 Alfred Edward Miller Mundy, "the Squire", died; the family divested themselves of any personal concern in the estate in favour of the company they had created - the Shipley Colliery Company; which administered the 3 pits of Shipley, Coppice and Woodside. When the estate had been in their personal ownership the family did not extract coal from under the Hall or its grounds on the hill. However, the Colliery Company decided to mine the rich seams of coal underneath the hill. The halt in operations caused by the 1926 strike resulted in extensive damage to the Hall, its outbuildings and the surrounding gardens due to subsidence.

In 1943 the Hall was demolished, and on I January 1947 the Shipley Colliery Company became part of the National Coal Board. The Marlpool housing estate was built largely to house the miners of Coppice Colliery and their families after the second world war. At its peak, Woodside produced 1,000,000 tons of coal by hand in 1959. Thereafter, deep mining gradually declined; the Coppice and Woodside pits merged, and Coppice mined its last coal on 26 August 1966.

Opencast Mining

Now the story goes full circle because, as deep-mining declined, extraction commenced of the coal with which the story of Shipley coal had begun - the coal that was to be found near the surface. In the 1950s and 1960s the NCB began an extensive programme of opencast working that radically altered the landscape and created many of the present features of Shipley Park. After extensive restoration work, to both the opencast areas and the old colliery tips, the land was sold to Derbyshire County Council and opened to the public as Shipley Country Park in May 1976.

Today

At first sight, the modern Country Park contains few obvious relics of its industrial past. However, all the areas of water are man-made; there are the railway cuttings, such as Raike's Cutting, now pleasant easy walks; the remains of the Nutbrook Canal can be explored, with footpath rights of way along the full length of its former towpath (much of it outside the Park proper); and the mine headstocks at Woodside are still in use as a pumping station vital to the drainage of the Nottinghamshire coalfield.

SEEIT also compiled information on the Geology of Shipley Park

next Chapter

Return to Cover Page

Comments to dr.brian.taylor@ntlworld.com

href="/shipley/studhistory9.htm"