Visits to Forgotten Places
Hartington Colliery.
A few years ago I was fortunate enough to make several visits to Hartington colliery prior to the demise of the local coal industry. Hartington colliery or Hartington Silkstone was then used only as a second means of egress for Ireland colliery and after the closure of Ireland it was used solely for water pumping from the underground seams to protect Markham and Bolsover collieries from flooding. The pumps were situated in the pit bottom and were quite antiquated and so the firm of Cementation were lining the collieries old upcast shaft at the bottom to facilitate a large submersible pump to pump water into the nearby river Rother.
Access to the mine for British Coal staff was via the old downcast shaft which was converted to an upcast shaft by the inclusion of a surface fan house and equipment which was now obsolete and redundant but all still in place. The winder which was part of our examinations was really only a large haulage engine and not what I would call a proper winding engine, the winding rope was only as thick as one of my fingers!.
The ride on the chair was quite sedate and on arriving in the wet pit bottom and stepping off the chair one noticed how low the roof was and how it was like stepping back in time to the so called golden age of mining. The compact pit bottom was not suffering from weight stress or floor lift on it, it was built that way. For many years the only way to ride the shaft was in a kibble, a large bucket, this was rather neatly placed at the side of the roadway next to the shaft.
The colliery itself had not been used to mine coal for about forty or fifty years but was the centre of attention by the survey staff and the colliery officials from Markham who were checking plans and exploring behind stoppings and up old roadways, one poor soul had to walk from Markham through Ireland to Hartington and possibly back again through the old roadways on safety examinations. I cannot say definitively whether the walk was both ways or whether it was on a daily or weekly basis but it was done.
One such stopping was removed to expose the staple shaft opened up to prove the Blackshale seam in 1879, before the main shaft was deepened to gain access to the Blackshale seam. This is reported in the Staveley companies Annual Reports in the 1870's. The cage is very small, possibly large enough for four men, it is very unstable and the sides of the angles could be moved from side to side easily. It was very rickety. The steel winding rope was coiled up at the side of the chair, this was the thickness of my little finger and the winding engine was just a small haulage engine.
The old pump switch gear for the mine was housed in a room just off the side of the old upcast shaft in which the Cementation engineers were working. The idea was that when the new pump was installed the pit would flood and the rising water would be allowed to spill over into the shaft through a large letter box set into one side of the shaft for the submersible pump to keep the level from rising up the shaft. On one visit I was fortunate enough to ride in the contractors kibble out of the mine, this held four men comfortably. The shaft had a temporary winder above it with two sets of winding ropes. One raised and lowered the kibble in the centre for men and materials whilst the other ropes wound a platform up and down for the men to work on the sides of the shaft. This machine had seen service at various mines since the 1930,s.
When the winder operated safety gates were lifted from over the shaft and one could see daylight from above, the walls of the shaft were damp and reflected the light to make it look like a spiders web shining with dew. On the way to the surface we passed the old furnace drift which in the days before proper fans were used housed a furnace. The furnace burnt coal, the hot air rose pulling with it air from within the mine and up to the surface thus ventilating the mine. Not very efficiently and very dangerous. The drift was like a large cavern running uphill and into the distance.
The Top Hards at Markham Revisited.
The Top Hard seam was the most important seam for the collieries in the country prior to Nationalisation, at Markham the seam was worked out possibly by the 1930's. Two drifts were also sunk from the Top Hard seam to exploit the lower First Waterloo seam at number two pit end but the coal was unworkable due to the water which repeatedly flooded the workings. Water was siphoned from the Top Hard seam, First Waterloo seam and the shaft water garlands into the pit bottom at No.2. Colliery. The water was then pumped out of the mine onto the surface by two, two-hundred horsepower Mackley pumps. Prior to this water was pumped in stages, pit bottom via the Top Hards pump lodge to the surface. The shaft signals, siphons and pit bottom roadways in the Top Hards were examined daily by a deputy and electrician. This was one of my duties as the pit bottom electrician. The daily visit was always one of trepidation and some electricians only ever went up once and refused ever to go again.
The cage would pick us up in the number three shaft bottom and turned over to us for the visit, we would have to ride the cage with the safety gates up to make it easier for us to get off On reaching the Top Hards inset the chair would slow down and we would stop it at the correct staging post with the emergency stop button. The trick was then to jump over the three foot or so gap between the edge of the cage and the shaft inset. There was a platform at the inset but it was even more dangerous to lean over and pull this onto the chair.
One Saturday night three deputies and myself decided to explore the seam through to the number four colliery end or as far as the damaged roadways would allow us. The number two colliery inset was small and not too wide as I would presume the pit bottom here was used to transport men and materials, the whole of the pit bottom was lined with red brick arches like old terraced house genells.
The first place of interest was the old pony stables, these were situated to the right of the main roadway just before a roof fall under which we had to crawl after we had inspected the stables. It would be true to say that these stables were in a very remarkable condition. Every pony had its own stall with its name carved into the wood of a split bar (a piece of wood used for support, like a tree trunk cut through the middle along its length. Giving it a flat side and a half round side). These split bars were a structural part of the stalls. The names were then blacked in. The row of stalls ran straight for about twenty yards or so and then turned to the right where the tackle store was, this area was inaccessible due to a roof fall.
The remains of salt bars, pot water troughs and metal food troughs were to be seen littering the stalls, one mid stall contained hay which when touched fell away to dust another contained manure which also fell away to dust when touched. The stables were in such a good condition that it appeared that they may have only been abandoned that day.
The roadway we were following requires some description as it had little support for a main roadway and as the roof resembled a slate top billiard table, smooth and flat only a few pieces of timber had been erected. The road was split into three sections: a dry stone wall of about three feet from the side and a few feet high over which all the roof dirt had been thrown to keep the roadway tidy. Next was a wooden railed tramway with a clear walkway to the side of it.
As we followed this roadway to the other pit it became wider and taller with brick arches, this started at about six feet tall, then grew to twelve feet and then eighteen feet and then onto twenty four feet, terminating at number one downcast shaft where it was just one huge brick wall. The template for the arching was laid up against the wall in the pit bottom.
We explored the pit bottom and it was amazing to see the colossal size of the machinery of that bygone era. There were the remains of a huge haulage engine with giant gears, presumably to haul the tubs of coal around the pit bottom and onto the chair. One item of engineering which sticks out in my mind was a storage tank for compressed air, the tank looked like a huge bomb (or Jules Vernes space ship). The tank had a pipe into it from the surface air compressors and a pipe out down the shaft, complete with valves. What made it more impressive was that it was fabricated entirely from curved steel plates with large cold formed rivets holding it together. It is feasible that the system was part of a supply to power air tools used as a result of the explosions which occurred in the Blackshale seam in 1937 and then again in 1938. The visit over we returned to the number three shaft the way we had come.
The Monkwood Collieries.
This walk covers a few miles and was originally written in 1990, some things have since changed but it is basically the same walk. The starting point is at Lea Bridge around 344754 it is worth noting the inscription under the bridge on Keepers Cottage side, you might have to get your feet wet to see it.
John Ingman y
Mason & Hugh
Rippon y Thirdbaro
in 1722
A Thirdbaro was a keeper of the peace or a constable third in line in the local command structure. John Ingham was the mason who built or rebuilt the bridge under the command of Hugh Rippon the constable in 1722.
Walking from Lea Bridge with your back to the cottages walk to the right towards the small footbridge turn left as you cross over the wooden bridge and bear left and follow the brook on your left is a small square stone building which is possibly the remains of an old sheep dip and a small stone built bridge over the brook, the bridge is made of local stone and it diverts the original footpath over the brook as it comes down from Monkwood colliery. At this point the footpath becomes much wider and appears to be stone paved.
On the path at 343759 is an embankment lined with local stone this is the remains of the tramway bridge which carried the coal over the footpath from Barlow Lees colliery (343759) to the Old Monkwood or the number one colliery. The footpath is now about twelve feet wide, wide enough for carts and ponies and a little farther on, on the right is the place where the stone for the tramway bridge and footpath was quarried. The footpath climbs uphill and ends up at the colliery.
The remains of New Monkwood or the number two colliery are at 346760 and are raised about fifteen feet above the ground level and the elevation is built by utilising shale and coal waste. The air shaft feeding to the ventilation chimney can be seen it is constructed out of six and a half foot brick arching sat on top of blocks of stone. (This is now filled in as the roof was collapsing). The upcast shaft is about five feet deep now, red brick lined and about eight foot in diameter. Evidence of other brick and stone buildings can be seen and a little further uphill is the downcast shaft. Off the steepest edge of the hill over to the fields was the other tramway which took the coal from here to the number one colliery. The shafts were over 300 feet deep.
The colliery is shown as disused in 1919 and not present on maps of 1876. The colliery may have closed around 1881 when the Monkwood colliery company failed. It is also possible that the pit was mothballed and reopened later on.
There is little to identify that Monkwood number one colliery at 349755 ever existed but the fields at the back of the timber yard once housed several railway sidings for the Monkwood branch line and the coal was loaded here from the collieries which came via two tramways. A walk down the branch line starts from the timber yard, cross the road and you will see that the first part of the old line has been made into a road. The line is well defined with the remains of many rotting rail sleepers are lying about, the walls that bound the line are made from grey-white boulders of slag from the iron or steel process and are now discoloured with age. Off the line comes the Nesfield branch line which serviced the Nesfield colliery nearby. This is a pleasant walk which unfortunately terminates at the Sheepbridge industrial estate.
The Hollingwood Common Canal.
Looking at the site of the tunnel entry from the tow path of the Chesterfield Canal.
In 1991 opencast operations were being carried out near to Staveley works and the Hollingwood Common Canal 417747, the contractors were to be responsible for the cleaning up of the Chesterfield canal and the Brimington bypass once again seemed likely to be built but the issue of building a road over an underground canal seemed likely to have its problems and so the tunnel was to be opened up and explored to see if it was safe to take the road over it. On a visit to the site I spoke to the site foreman who was trying to find the location of the tunnel entrance. We worked out where we thought it might be and to my delight the following week the site had been excavated and two tunnels were exposed. Our guess was spot on and so was John Fareys description from 1811. It was hoped that once the tunnel had been exposed that a team (hopefully including me) would walk up or punt up whatever to explore and check the state of the tunnel. Unfortunately this was not to happen as the tunnel had silted up to about six inches from the top and set like concrete there was a few inches of flowing water on top of that and an air gap of a couple of inches. The water now flows from the pipe into the canal.
The Hollingwood Common Canal is a tunnel one and threequarter mile long, and not connecting with the Chesterfield Canal but kept one foot lower by means of a culvert under the canal. The whole of its length except the first three hundred yards is driven in the Deep End or Squires seam. It is used for draining and working the coal seam and two others near to it produces good coking coals for the Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire market At its southern end it is about eighty yards from the surface.
The tunnel is six foot high, five feet nine inches wide with two foot of water The boats are twenty one foot long, three feet six inches wide and hold seven cones or boxes containing twenty to twenty two hundredweight of coal each. When the tunnel boats arrive at the side of the canal a crane is used to hoist up these boxes and empty the contents into a canal boat Canal barges on the Chesterfield canal for the conveyance of coal were seventy foot long seven feet wide and capable of holding twenty tons of coal. Near to the middle of the tunnel there are sixty eight yards driven through a grit stone. without the arching being held up by bricks as it is in other places along its length. This curious colliery belongs to his Grace the Duke of Devonshire on his own account under the direction of Mr. George Dickens his colliery agent. (J.Farey 1811).
The tunnel is double brick lined with several bricks marked 'Hardwick' which may be later additions when the ends of the tunnel were sealed, the tunnel is impassable because of a build up of silt to about five or six inches from the top with a small stream running on top of the silt and only a few inches of air space left on top of the water. The second tunnel would appear to be a siding to store the empty boats in for the return journey. So all the empty barges travelled up to the other end together. The barges would possibly have been peddled up and down the tunnel by the miners laying on their backs and pushing on the roof.