Brierley Forest Park miners' sculptures

Category	Art
Dates	21 February 1957: explosion at Sutton Colliery. 1989: colliery closes. 1994: Brierley Forest Park opens. 2017: original figures photographed, one missing. 2021: replacement group in place.

Carved figures of miners in Brierley Forest Park, on the site of Sutton Colliery at Huthwaite, made by Robert Koenig in memory of the five men who died after the colliery's explosion of 21 February 1957. Weathered originals in wood were replaced by a similar set with a new memorial stone.

Five pale carved figures of miners in caps standing on a patch of bare earth beside an inscribed stone, among trees. — The miners' sculptures and memorial stone in Brierley Forest Park in 2021 Graham Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph

Four dark weathered wooden figures of miners on a grassy slope beside a stone with a green plaque. — Robert Koenig's earlier wooden figures in Brierley Forest Park in 2017, one of them missing Graham Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph

The mining history in this record

Sutton Colliery closed in 1989, and its site became Brierley Forest Park, opened in 1994. The pit's history is dominated by the explosion of 21 February 1957, in which twenty-five men suffered burns, five of whom died.

Robert Koenig carved a group of figures of miners to stand for the five dead, set beside a memorial stone outside the park's visitor centre. By 2017 the wooden figures were dark and weathered and one had been taken away; by 2021 the group and its stone had been replaced by a similar new work in a paler material.

People

Robert Koenig, sculptor.

Legacy today

The figures stand outside the visitor centre, one of several reminders of the colliery in the park with a commemorative stone on Rooley Tops and pit wheels along the path to Brierley Waters.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

The carved figures by Robert Koenig in Brierley Forest Park depict the five miners who died after the Sutton Colliery explosion of 1957. (documented fact) ¹
Brierley Forest Park, opened in 1994, is on the site of Sutton Colliery, and timber miner sculptures stand outside its visitor centre. (documented fact) ^2,3
By 2021 the sculpture and its memorial stone had been replaced by a similar new work. (contemporary account) ⁴

Mines

Sutton Colliery — Nottinghamshire
The carved miners stand on the colliery's former site, now Brierley Forest Park, in memory of the five men who died after its 1957 explosion.

Disasters

Sutton Colliery explosion, 1957 — 21 February 1957

Sources

(observational) Memorial in Brierley Forest Park (Geograph 5422791) — Geograph
(secondary) Sutton Colliery — Wikipedia
(secondary) Brierley Forest Park — Discover Ashfield (Ashfield District Council)
(observational) Commemorative sculpture in Brierley Forest Country Park (Geograph 6914042) — Geograph

Record created: 4 October 2026 · Last researched: 4 October 2026