Radford and Wollaton mines 1887


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On this map can be seen old pits north of Radford Woodhouse.

The radford station can be seen at the junction of Ilkeston Road and St Peters Street.

IN THIS MAP NORTH IS LEFT

radford-wollaton-mines-1887.jpg

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  • 8 years later...

I wonder what that old coal pit is at the bottom left as you look at the map, I think I'll try and correlate it with the BGS data.

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I can't work out any of the above to the modern maps, could Radford Woodhouse be in what is now Wollaton??

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Radford Woodhouse was off Radfordbridge Road.

See four bold black line below where it says Radford Woodhouse

Both my maternal grandparents born there(Gate Street) 1887

Gate Street being nearest to the railway line

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Problem is LB, I have no idea where the Crown Inn is, I left Nottingham in 1975, and I've only been back for a few short visits, last time was around 22 years back..

But wouldn't "Langley Mill Bridge" be near or on the Derbyshire county border??

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Coal mining in the area goes back hundreds of years.

I have a book entitled

"Early coal mining around Nottingham 1500 - 1650"

By Richard S. Smith.

And there were certainly mines in the Wollaton area during that period

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Take a look at this for reference - Radford Bridge road is where the terraced houses were, and the north/south railway roughly is where the ring-road is - the double roundabouts are where the dog-leg in the canal was. Wollaton pit is futher west, off the bottom of Mick's map.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nottingham,+UK/@52.9584369,-1.1944806,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x487832d2390779cd:0x108063201919db15?hl=en

I find THIS site very useful for correlating old maps with what is there now!

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The oldest recorded coal tramway in the world was at Wollaton built in 1603/4 and ran about 2 miles from Strelley to Wollaton. It was built by Huntingdon Beaumont who was a partner of Sir Percival Willoughby.

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/mines/Wollaton-Waggonway-Tramway/

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The whole area from Crown Island to Wollaton and Strelley is riddled with pits from various points in time. They were taking coal out of simple pits (literally holes in the ground) many centuries ago, indeed it was coal that paid for the building of the present Strelley Hall. Most of the coal in the Bilborough/Strelley/Broxtowe and Wollaton areas was mined by the Willoughbys of Wollaton and the Strelleys of Strelley Hall and later the Edge family who later owned the place. Much of it gave way to modern coal factors, mostly the Barber and Walker families.

Before Bilborough, Strelley and Aspley were expended, the whole countryside around there had holes in the ground which were remnants of the primitive 'Bell Pits'. I remember playing in them in the woods on Glaisdale Drive before the industrial units were built.

There were deeper pits around the area of Trentham Drive and it is recorded that a small boy fell down one of them and died before the last war. There are publications in the local studies library about the early coal mining in what is now West Nottingham. Very interesting is the mention of the first simple railway from mines at Strelley down to Wollaton. It was built around 1603 but was gone by 1615. It is thought to have followed the course of Old Coach Road which also passed Old Park Farm.

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Lord Newcastle owned Newcastle Colliery which was in Strelley, the Middletons made their fortune out of coal mined from bellpits to the west of the last Wollaton Colliery, they also had an underground operation near Bramcote Moor, this was the one he had the slough driven for, to drain the workings. There was also a law case taken to the House of Lords as Newcastle was diverting his drainage water from his early coal mines without paying Lord Middleton. Brought both operations to a standstill for around a year while the Lords deliberated on the law suit.

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Cliff, to the west of your cross are the two disused shafts, I can't find any mention of them on the BGS site, there are plenty of borehole logs but no shafts. They must have been abandoned prior to the Act which required ALL mine workings to be surveyed and maps drawn and kept up to date.

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I think it was the Edge family who was taken to the Star Chamber over misuse of Willoughby's sough. The Thomas North coal mining system was very interesting. Thomas North senior started with quite small mines at Babbington Village, but his son was more of an entrepreneur. He built the mine at Cinderhill which became Babbington Colliery. It was the first truly modern colliery with steel tubbing in the shafts to hold back water and also guides in the shafts to hold the cages steady. It was also one of the first pits to use the Long Wall system. Coal was taken from the face in rail trucks instead of in baskets, and a ventilation system was used whereby a fire was built at the bottom of one of the shafts to suck fresh air through the workings.

Babbington Colliery ran into trouble very quickly because of a fault which stopped coal being got. However, North persevered and after about five years came to the end of the fault and coal was mined once more. However, it nearly bankrupted him. North built mines at Kimberley (near the Queen Adelaide), Broxtowe, Whitemoor and Bulwell. His railway linking all but Bulwell was seen as the marvel of the age. With links from both the Midland line at Basford and the GNR line, it went through the rear of what is now Broxtowe Estate and across the fields to Babbington Village and on to Kimberley. The trucks were hauled up from Broxtowe by a stationary engine which was situated where that antenna that looks like a candlestick is at Kimberley. The railway had branches to Turkey farm where there was a vent shaft, and eventually joined the Erewash Valley railway line near Ilkeston Junction.

North built his miners houses at Whitemoor and Napoleon Square near the Bottom of Broxtowe Lane, also other right next to Babbington Colliery. He built a chapel for the men at Babbington and I think he also built the Anglican church at Cinderhill.

Sadly, he went bankrupt and his bank eventually took ownership of his assets. He died penniless. Although he was often in dispute with them, his miners appreciated the fact that he provided employment and all turned out for his funeral. They all put towards a monument in his name which still stands at the top of Bailey Street Cemetary at Basford.

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Further to the Thomas North Railway. It also ran parallel to Nuthall Road crossing Bells Lane on the Level, Broxtowe Lane over a bridge and through Newcastle Colliery at Whitemoor. From crossing Aspley Lane on the level, there was also a level crossing over the Trowell Line before it entered Babbington Wharf sidings where Marchwood Close is now. Then it crossed Wollaton Road on the level before reaching the wharf on the Nottingham Canal. North had an agreement with the Nottingham Canal Company to offload so many tons of coal onto barges (I forget how many) with penalties. As he was always short of his agreed tonnage, he was always in trouble with them, especially as he kept building land sale wharves elsewhere. There were also sidings on the Trowell Line at the back of where the ambulance station is now situated. You can still see where they were and the longer bridge parapets on Radford Bridge Road.

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The longwall method was worked many years before Thomas North was even thought about. It was thought to have first been used in the Shropshire in the late 16th century, although it didn't resemble anything on the lines of longwalls as we know them.

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The dispute was between Nicholas Strelley and Sir John Willoughby.

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