Clipstone Colliery


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There's been some discussion on a mining museum in another thread but I thought I'd post the following link, might bring back some memories for certain people.

http://www.abandoned-britain.com/PP/clipstone/1.htmhttp://www.abandoned-britain.com/PP/clipstone/1.htm[/url]

Remember to follow the link at the bottom of each page.

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  • 2 months later...

Aaaah, that's Joe's site. His username is Reaperman and he's also a moderator on an urbex forum. www.derelictplaces.co.uk

There's also some pics on www.mids-urbexing.co.uk amongst others lol, although you have to be a member to see the pics and reports.

Cheers,

:) Sal

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I'm building a website up, long job! The late Terry Blythe had a Notts and Derbyshire pits site, his Son let the site lapse. I have permission to use any and all of his material I downloaded before the site went.

Shane Phillips kindly sent me some 300 photos of pits around Notts and Derbyshire including a load of Clipstone piccies. As soo as I'm at that stage, I will be sizing and posting many of those pictures.

The site URL is called "Coal, Collieries and Mining" and the url is http://coalcollieryandmining.110mb.com/

This is a long term project, I have tons of work to carry out on the site, been at it most of today, so if you visit, be patient.

When I have uploaded all the data I have here to the site, I will start expanding to take in the other coalfields and pits.

This could well be one of the best sites to research colliery history in one spot when finished.

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Website looks good! If you are interested, send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send you the essays I have written about my experiences at the NCB.

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Got a lot of work to do on it though Eric, many hours of hard work!

Beavis, I finished my apprenticeship at Cotgrave after Clifton closed, that was in 1968, then moved on. Wasn't a very nice pit to work at in the early days. All the five faces at that time were in deep hard and to the north of the shafts at the end of the loco road as it was back then. They were the first faces in deep hard after the south side deep soft fiasco.

Shane Phillips sent me a booklet on the second Blackshale seam face.

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Forgive me for being ignorant Ayup but, "deep hard" and "softhard" ? They go straight over my head, and i am asking out of interest here, also what is Blackshale? Obviously its a name for coal but why?

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Each seam is given a name Rob, The Bright's, Hazels and several others to the Top Hard Seam, then Deep Soft, Deep Hard, Piper, Tupton, Ashgate then the bottom most workable seam I know of in Notts, Blackshale. (There are many more workable seams in Notts like the Dunsil etc)

The Brights outcrop near the Derbyshire border.

Why name them??? Because there are so many that are worked, so it's important to know which seam is which, how deep they are etc for safety of other mines close by. Plus each seam has different properties, ie Deep hard coal is great steam raising coal, reasonably clean. Piper is highly bituminous, extremely hot burning, good for household coal. Tupton or as it's better known "Low Main" is very dirty, has high ash content, low calorific value etc etc.

I suppose they could have numbered the seams from surface (1) to the lowest say (20), but the practice is naming them. Seems pretty universal around the world.

In NSW we had the Wongawilli seam and Balgowni seam and Bulli seam. Near Lithgow we had the Lithgow seam.

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I would add that the names do vary. The names in Notts, may not be the same names used in Yorkshire - even if they are the same seam. Often, especially many years ago, they had no idea if they were in the same seam in different areas, so they got named differently.

I worked in the Kilburn seam at Donisthorpe - but we also had a "Top Hard" - who knows if it was the same one as in Notts?

Seam names (such as Kilburn) also often came from where an outcrop of the seam was found.

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I was at Cotgrave colliery from 86 till it closed.

Do you remember Boo "The Axeman" Buxton and Alan Wilson at all ?

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Top hard seam was too close to the "Bunter" sandstone from Clifton Colliery southwards to be worked Ian. Ironically, it's over six feet thick in the old Clifton shafts! But water prevented it being worked.

Cotgrave's highest seam they worked was the Deep Soft seam, abandoned due to poor floor and roof conditions.

Next seam down is the Deep Hard, which was their mainstay coal for years. Deep Hard is nearly 2000 ft below the surface at Cotgrave.

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Clifton – No.1 Shaft

Seam Thickness Depth

Coombe 2’ 8” 190’ 8”

Top Hard 5’ 11” 219’ 8”

Dunsil 3’ 0” 292’ 3”

Waterloo 3’ 3” 319’ 6”

Deep Soft 5’ 0” 727’ 9”

Deep Hard 5’ 7” 770’ 1”

Piper 3’ 4” 810’ 0”

Wollaton – No.1 Shaft

Seam Thickness Depth

Coombe 2’ 0” 27’ 2”

Top Hard 5’ 2” 38’ 4”

Dunsil 1’ 11” 87’ 7”

First Waterloo 2’ 10” 140’ 1”

Second Waterloo 2’ 8” 192’ 3”

Second Ell 1’ 8” 354’ 8”

Deep Soft 3’ 0” 554’ 9”

Deep Hard 4’ 10” 594’ 2”

First Piper 2’ 0” 625’ 9”

Depth of Shaft 637’ 3”

Cotgrave – No.1 Shaft

Seam Thickness Depth

High Main 4’ 9” 883’ 4”

Main Bright 3’ 8” 1029’ 3”

Low Bright 1’ 4” 1109’ 1”

Brinsley 3’ 7” 1115’ 3”

High Hazles 3’ 2” 1151’ 3”

Cinderhill Main 3’ 7” 1206’ 3” (also known as First St.Johns)

Main Smut 4’ 4” 1285’ 7”

Top Hard 3’ 6” 1296’ 5”

Dunsil 2’ 0” 1356’ 11”

First Waterloo 2’ 10” 1382’ 9”

Second Waterloo 2’ 0” 1407’ 0”

First Ell 2’ 0” 1505’ 9”

Deep Soft 3’ 4” 1765’ 11”

Deep Hard 3’ 7” 1802’ 9”

First Piper 1’ 6” 1858’ 10”

Second Piper 1’ 11” 1882’ 7”

Tupton 3’ 6” 1938’ 2”

Threequarter 1’ 7” 1946’ 8”

Yard 2’ 4” 2014’ 1”

Blackshale 1’ 0” 2031’ 2”

Depth of Shaft 2054’ 8”

Those are the seam depths in the shafts of those three pits. I dissagree with the Blackshale seam thickness, I somehow think someone left a zero off after the foot sign. It was worked with a ranging drum shearer, and there's no way you'd get one of those machines in a one foot seam.

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I've added some new pages, will take me some time editing the next lot, but hope to have all the Collieries A to B done by the end of the week. Next will come all the collieries beginning with "C". I'm adding one photo to each colliery page and will add internal links to several other photos to each colliery. "A" Winnings up, though very little info on that pit, Alfreton, ditto, Annesley and Babbington.

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