Pits Around Nottingham.


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Any of the older members work "dahn pit".??? I worked for Lord Robens during the 60's at Clifton, then when it closed on to Cotgrave. Remember all those headstocks around Nottingham? Babbington, Gedl

Funny I was gonna post a thread on Pits. Thanks Anyone got an image of the old Clifton Colliery? I can remeber it being there when I came to Nottingham in 63

Friends Do i have to explain everything, this one meaning this web site. Umm some people. :D

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Hey Smiffy are you sure it was me you went with?? I remember going down but not with you :blink:

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Guest smithylass

look love i know u are aging rapidly...but who else would have been that stupid to go down ...apart from me :lol:

plus if i had said no...well u know what u were like with them nail clipers Shock

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I do remember going down with all those dirty miners, & the wind rushing through my hair, but I cant remember you there, I must have been a bit nervous :unsure:

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  • 3 weeks later...
:blink: ohhhhhhhh so that what the wind was

Monday day shift there was a lot of wind about, and it wasn't the ventilation either Shock Shock

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Well like all sites this time of year, mines slow, but memberships growing, getting on for 60 now! Wasn't mean't to be a pun either crazy

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Hello Ayup

Where have you been i've missed ya heaps!! things have been a bit quiet,but I suppose we are all busy doing our own thing. Have you seen me browser button ? we have a new dog & I can't post a pic of him.............he's gorgeous too ;)

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Hello Ayup

Where have you been i've missed ya heaps!! things have been a bit quiet,but I suppose we are all busy doing our own thing. Have you seen me browser button ? we have a new dog & I can't post a pic of him.............he's gorgeous too ;)

Been spreading myself thin around the forums Caz!

Browser button????? Lost me old luv!

We have rain at last! I have only mowed grass about three times this season, it's been soooooooooo dry! Normally I have to mow every week, even the trees were starting to shed their leaves due to drought stress. But back on track, seasonal rains nearly every afternoon now!

All forums are slow at the moment Caz, peeps are either on hols, enjoying spending time outside, or just too busy with summery things like their gardens etc.

Give it a few weeks when the days get shorter, weather colder and it's stay indoors where the heats turned up, and see where they all will be :D

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  • 4 months later...

"...What memories of wastage at Clifton!...."

And at most other pits in the area...

Standard excuse for leaving valuable plant below ground was that it wasn't "economic " to retrieve it.

The ultimate 'iffy' explanation...

Cheers

Robt P.

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There was a comment I recall from Dave Watson and Ernie Gerrard, two ex Radford and Wollaton Colliery electricians. We'd just had a brand new crane installed in the electric workshop to replace the old hand cranked one. Both said the same thing, "won't be long now before Clifton's closed, shortly after we'd had new cranes in the electric shop at Radford and Wollaton, they closed the pits"! ;)

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What memories of wastage at Clifton! Thousands spent to start the roadway drivage from the tupton sean to the lower seam below tupton! What promises they gave us, another 50 years of life at the present rates of extraction plus a conveyor drift to the surface and modernisation of the screen/washery.

Problem was, Cotgrave had a manpower problem, and Clifton was old. I often wonder how many stayed at Cotgrave after I left, I know of a couple who didn't stay there long.

Plenty of blatant wastage stories filtered through to us who were working at the Bestwood Area HQ Offices.

Tales of highly expensive mining equipment, AB trepanners etc, left underground for ever were legion.

Perhaps an indication of the general indifference which set in when the industry was in its death throes.

IIRC, the manpower problem at Cotgrave was partially resolved by the recruitment of previously redundant miners from the North-East.

The Geordie twang is still a prominent feature of the village!

So many Geordies went to the Ollerton area Collieries that a fleet of Hall’s Coaches ran to the North-East on Friday evenings, returning Sunday.

I understand their Friday/Sunday service still runs, but in a limited form.

Cheers

Robt P.

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After the NCB closed Clifton, I was transferred to Cotgrave where I finished my apprenticeship, stayed until the Nov of 1968 and left for better pay and conditions in outside industry Rob. It was a feature of Cotgrave at that time to see loads leave at the end of the week, all experienced men! What a waste of manpower!

Most of the Clifton transferrees left within a year.

I came across a couple a few years later at BPB's Marblaegis mine at East Leake.

I also "bumped" into my old elec engineer in charge, Lol Adcock, when I worked at Wilson Ford, who did overhauls of motors and transformers for the NCB Lol was working out of Bestwood HQ at the time.

I never saw machinery left underground in my time, mainly because of the NCB "rental scheme" which came into effect in the late 50's early 60's, where all machinery belonged to area and not to the pit itself. Lots of money was wasted recovering machinery rather than have to pay the monthly NCB charges on it, even if it was a piece of scrap. There was loads of wastage, as there always is at any mine, either government owned or private, goes with the territory!

When I was at Boulby, (Cleveland Potash) we abandoned a Marrietta Miner in the old workings!

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I also "bumped" into my old elec engineer in charge, Lol Adcock, when I worked at Wilson Ford, who did overhauls of motors and transformers for the NCB Lol was working out of Bestwood HQ at the time.

I vaguely remember Lol from a brief stint that I did at the No6 Area Central Workshops at Bestwood. IIRC, he lived in Hucknall.

My latter NCB days were spent 'pen pushing' in the Engineers Dept.

Should have waited a few more months, as I left of my own volition just prior to my ex-colleagues receiving a relatively handsome pay off!

Still retain the inbuilt ability to pick the wrong check-out queue in a supermarket :rolleyes:

Cheers

Robt P.

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  • 1 month later...

Ive just restored my Coal Mine forum after being down through a stupid mistake.

Anyone interested in mining, coal or otherwise, there's a wealth of info on the site.

http://coalmine.proboards23.com/index.cgi

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  • 10 months later...

Rob, was just going through the old posts.

The blatent waste ceased when the NCB set up the National Plant Scheme or whatever it was called.

A pit essentially rented it's equipment from area, they would be charged daily for it, hence the reason Managers went through the roof when faces broke down or the trunk belts were standing.

When a face finished, we were pretty quick to recover the face equipment and return it to area.

There was a time, before I started in the early 60's when the Colliery Manager ordered his own equipment from the manufacturer, some of that equipment was still in use when I started my career underground.

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I've got a mate in the Crane Hire Biz.

In the 80's he would be at the Pits for hours and days, just waiting in case they needed him - No expence spared!

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I've got a mate in the Crane Hire Biz.

In the 80's he would be at the Pits for hours and days, just waiting in case they needed  him - No expence spared!

Thats when the backroom boys were working on ways to make pits look uneconomic Mick.

A mate of mine, who was a Deputy at Shriebrook told me of how management were just throwing money away on overtime etc towards the end to make the books look bad.

During the 50's,60's and possibly 70's each pit had an annual budget which when expended was it, only justifiable overtime was allowed. We apprentices were the first to have overtime cuts near the end of the financial year.

Things seem to have altered under Maggies plan to rid the country of a viable coal industry, not to mention a very profitable mining machine, electrical manufacturing base wrecked too.

Shirebrook was a profitable Derbyshire pit until the NCB "bean counters" were allowed to kill it, like so many others, Big "K", Cotgrave, Calverton, etc, etc..

We at Clifton were told the coal we were producing was crap, yeh, thats all we had available until the drifts were sunk down to the next seam, BUT, they wanted men at Cotgrave, so we had to provide the labour there.

The NCB had spent thousands on the new approach area for those drifts!! There was plans to drive a drift from the coal prep plant to meet up with the inbye bunker at 1's number 4 junction too!! All passed! That would have rid us of the bottleneck, the old narrow shafts which couldn't have been widened due to geological problems.

Alas, it's all history now, like coal itself, history...

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  • 1 year later...

Linby Colliery in pictures on Youtube.

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