D. H. Lawrence and Brinsley Colliery

Brinsley Colliery, worked by Barber, Walker & Company from 1842 to 1934, was where Arthur John Lawrence — father of the novelist D. H. Lawrence — worked from the age of seven until his retirement in 1909, and which Lawrence drew on directly as the fictional colliery 'Beggarlee' in his 1913 novel Sons and Lovers.

The mining history in this record

D. H. Lawrence grew up in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in the heart of a coalfield worked by several local collieries, of which Brinsley — the nearest to his childhood home — was the one his own father worked. Arthur John Lawrence began at the pit as a child of seven, following his own father into the same colliery, and stayed there until his retirement in 1909, working for decades as a butty (a subcontracting collier who took on and paid his own small team). Lawrence's fiction returns repeatedly to this world: Sons and Lovers (1913), his most directly autobiographical novel, is set in a lightly fictionalised version of Eastwood and gives Brinsley the name 'Beggarlee'; the mine and its daily rhythms — the shift whistle, the walk home, the physical toll of the work — are rendered in close, unsentimental detail drawn from Lawrence's own upbringing in a miner's household. The short story 'Odour of Chrysanthemums' likewise draws on this same setting and its central, defining fact of life: a miner's household lived under the constant, quiet possibility of the pit taking its men. Lawrence's fiction is not a celebration of mining life so much as an unflinching account of its costs — the physical exhaustion, the class tension between his miner father and his more genteel mother, and the sense of a community wholly shaped by a single, dangerous industry.

Brinsley was not the only Barber, Walker pit in Lawrence's fiction. Moorgreen Colliery, opened by the company in 1865 a little north of Eastwood, is the 'Minton Pit' of Sons and Lovers, described as a large mine among cornfields, and Moorgreen Reservoir beside it is 'Nethermere' in The White Peacock and Sons and Lovers and 'Willey Water' in Women in Love, where Lawrence set the drowning at the water party on a real tragedy there. Lamb Close House, the Barbers' home above the reservoir, is 'Shortlands' in Women in Love. In that novel the colliery owner Thomas Crich is modelled on Thomas Barber of Barber, Walker, owner of the pits Lawrence's father worked; at Moorgreen a butty, Joe Birkin, was on close terms with 'Major Barber', and the modernising reforms that Crich's son Gerald forces on the pits in the novel were under way in the company's collieries in Lawrence's time.

People

Arthur John Lawrence (1847-1924), D. H. Lawrence's father, worked at Brinsley Colliery from the age of seven until his 1909 retirement, having followed his own father into the same pit; D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) drew directly on Brinsley and his father's working life for the fictional 'Beggarlee' colliery in Sons and Lovers (1913) and for 'Odour of Chrysanthemums'. Thomas Philip Barber of Barber, Walker and Company, owner of Brinsley and Moorgreen, is the model for the coal-owner Thomas Crich in Women in Love; Joe Birkin was a butty at Moorgreen on close terms with him.

Legacy today

Brinsley Colliery closed as a working pit in 1934, but the connection to Lawrence has kept it a place of literary pilgrimage. The colliery's tandem timber headstocks — the last surviving example of that construction style in Britain — stood on the site until December 2023, when Broxtowe Borough Council dismantled them after a structural survey found them unsafe; a public consultation on their future came back strongly in favour of restoring them as an exact timber replacement using the salvaged original winding wheels, and that restoration was under way as of 2026. The headstocks also had an earlier moment of fame on screen, featured in the 1960 film adaptation of Sons and Lovers, which won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Moorgreen was the last pit in the Eastwood area when it closed in 1985. Its site is now an industrial park and Colliers Wood, a community woodland on the old spoil, with a winding wheel kept as a memorial at the entrance on the Moorgreen road; the D. H. Lawrence walks from Eastwood pass it on the way to the reservoir.

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.

• Arthur John Lawrence, father of the novelist D. H. Lawrence, worked at Brinsley Colliery from the age of seven until his retirement in 1909, following his own father into the same pit. (documented fact) ^1,2
• D. H. Lawrence's 1913 novel Sons and Lovers, his most directly autobiographical work, fictionalises Brinsley Colliery as 'Beggarlee'. (documented fact) ¹
• The mining setting of Brinsley and its surrounding community is also drawn on in Lawrence's short story Odour of Chrysanthemums. (documented fact) ¹
• Brinsley Colliery's tandem timber headstocks featured in the 1960 film adaptation of Sons and Lovers, which won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. (documented fact) ¹
• Moorgreen Colliery is 'Minton Pit' in Sons and Lovers. (documented fact) ^3,4
• Moorgreen Reservoir is 'Willey Water' in Women in Love and 'Nethermere' in Sons and Lovers and The White Peacock; the Women in Love drowning drew on a real incident there. (documented fact) ^3,4
• The coal-owner Thomas Crich in Women in Love is modelled on Thomas Barber of Barber, Walker, owner of the pits where Lawrence's father worked; Barber's home, Lamb Close House, is 'Shortlands'. (documented fact) ^3,5
• Moorgreen closed in 1985 as the last pit in the area; its winding wheel stands as a memorial at the entrance to the site, now Colliers Wood and an industrial park. (documented fact) ⁴

Mines

• Brinsley Colliery — Nottinghamshire
  Brinsley Colliery is the real pit fictionalised as 'Beggarlee' in Sons and Lovers, and where Lawrence's father Arthur John Lawrence worked for over fifty years.
• Moorgreen Colliery — Nottinghamshire
  Moorgreen is 'Minton Pit' in Sons and Lovers; its owner Thomas Barber was the model for Thomas Crich in Women in Love.

Operators

Barber, Walker and Company

Real-world mining concepts used here

Buttyman, Colliery, Headgear

Sources

1. (secondary) Brinsley Colliery — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Brinsley Colliery's Connections to D.H. Lawrence — Derbyshire Record Office
3. (secondary) Moorgreen (Wikipedia) — Wikipedia
4. (observational) Eastwood, Greasley, Moorgreen Reservoir and Colliers Wood — The Walking Englishman
5. (secondary) Women in Love — Encyclopedia.com (Literature and Its Times)
6. (secondary) Notts Villages: Brinsley — Nottinghamshire History
7. (secondary) Women in Love — Oxford Reference

Record created: 2 September 2026 · Last researched: 18 September 2026