Minton Pit

Fictional record. This page describes a mine from a fictional setting, not a real place. Information is based on the cited canon, with adaptations and interpretation distinguished where necessary. It is kept separate from the real MineArchive corpus — see Fictional.

Also known as	Minton
Setting	Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence)
Location	One of the six pits of Carston, Waite and Co. strung along the loop of colliery railway below Bestwood, in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfield of the novel: 'a large mine among corn-fields' between Spinney Park and Bunker's Hill, visible from the Bottoms across the valley.
Type	Coal
Worked	Sunk 'some sixty years ago' before the novel's opening, when Carston, Waite and Co. elbowed aside the gin-pits; the company's first mine, at Spinney Park, was opened by Lord Palmerston. – Still working at the novel's close; Arthur Morel takes a job on its electrical plant.
Extent	Morel's stall lies 'about a mile and a half away from the bottom'; the company works five or six pits with a common railway and a single pay office.
Controlled by	Carston, Waite and Co. (Throughout the novel)

Overview

Minton is the colliery where Walter Morel hews coal for most of Sons and Lovers: a large pit among the corn-fields below Bestwood, one of six that Carston, Waite and Co. sank down the brook valleys after the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfield was opened up. The novel gives the pit's rhythms rather than its engineering: the headstock wheels standing still when 'Minton's knocked off', the colliers tramping home wet through the stile, the butty dividing the stall's earnings in the public house, the children fetching the pay on Friday afternoons, and Morel worked down to poorer and thinner stalls as he falls out with the manager. It is drawn from Brinsley Colliery, where Lawrence's father worked.

History

The novel opens with the coalfield's history: gin-pits elbowed aside 'some sixty years ago' by the large mines of the financiers, Carston, Waite and Co.'s first mine at Spinney Park opened by Lord Palmerston, and new pits sunk down the brook valleys from Selby and Nuttall 'until soon there were six pits working', Minton among them, linked by a loop of railway and served by the Squares and the Bottoms the company built for its miners. Walter Morel, a butty at Minton, could earn five pounds a week when he married, but the pit-manager Alfred Charlesworth, a boyhood contemporary, does not forgive his public-house sayings, and Morel 'came gradually to have worse and worse stalls, where the coal was thin, and hard to get, and unprofitable'. In summer the pits are slack and the men troop home at ten or eleven; in winter a decent stall might bring fifty or fifty-five shillings. On the day Paul is born Morel is hewing a piece of rock in a stall a mile and a half from the bottom, in a 'safe working' by the light of a green candle, and comes up to rain, the trucks full of wet coal lettered 'C.W. and Co.'. Later a fall in the pit injures him, and while he lies ill his fellow butty Barker and the other butty put by a share of the stall's profits each Friday for his wife. The colliers of the five pits are paid on Fridays, all the earnings of each stall going to the chief butty as contractor, who divides them in the public house or at home; the Morel children fetch the money from the company's handsome red-brick offices. Arthur Morel, the youngest son, finishes his apprenticeship and takes a job on the electrical plant at Minton Pit.

Workings

A shafted colliery with headstocks whose wheels the village watches for signs of work, a pit-bank, a lamp cabin and a 'chair' (the cage) to the top; underground, stalls worked by butties and their day-men on the contract system, some a mile and a half from the shaft bottom, lit by candles in safe workings and lamps elsewhere. Waste is tipped from a horse-drawn truck along the ridge of 'the great pit-hill'; the pit 'waved its plumes of white steam, coughed, and rattled hoarsely'.

Real-world mining concepts used here: Buttyman, Hewer, Stall, Sedimentary Beds and Seams

Closure

None; the pit is working at the end of the novel.

What became of it

Working throughout the novel's span, roughly the 1880s to about 1910.

Canon & adaptations

The 1960 film directed by Jack Cardiff was shot at real Nottinghamshire pits, the headstocks of Brinsley Colliery appearing in its opening scenes; the text itself never describes Minton's surface plant in that detail. Wikipedia's Brinsley Colliery article states that the novel calls the colliery Beggarlee, but in the text Beggarlee is a separate pit of the same company and Morel's own pit is Minton.

Real-world influence

Brinsley Colliery — Nottinghamshire
Brinsley is the pit D. H. Lawrence's father Arthur worked for over twenty years and the model for the colliery of Sons and Lovers (Wikipedia; this archive's Brinsley record), whose headstocks appear in the 1960 film. In the text Walter Morel's pit is Minton, with Beggarlee a separate pit of the same company; Wikipedia's Brinsley article gives the fictional name as Beggarlee.

Recorded claims

Each claim is marked with its basis — explicit canon, MineArchive inference, adaptation only, or fandom interpretation — and attached to the source(s) below. Where tellings disagree, both are kept.

Carston, Waite and Co. sank new mines down the brook valleys from Selby and Nuttall until six pits were working, Minton 'a large mine among corn-fields' between Spinney Park and Bunker's Hill, linked by a loop of railway. (explicit canon) ¹
Morel, a good miner, sometimes earned five pounds a week when he married, but the pit-manager Alfred Charlesworth gave him worse and worse stalls where the coal was thin. (explicit canon) ¹
The colliers of the five pits were paid on Fridays, all the earnings of each stall going to the chief butty as contractor, who divided them in the public-house or at home; the children fetched the money from the company offices. (explicit canon) ¹
In summer the pits are slack and the men troop home at ten, eleven or twelve; the children see the wheels on the headstocks standing and say 'Minton's knocked off'. (explicit canon) ¹
On the day of Paul's birth Morel's stall, 'a poor one', was about a mile and a half from the pit bottom, and he worked in a safe working by candlelight. (explicit canon) ¹
The trucks at the pit-bank are lettered 'C.W. and Co.', the company's initials. (explicit canon) ¹
The narrator gives the company six pits in the opening chapter but 'the five pits' at the Friday pay; the text does not reconcile the two. (explicit canon, disputed) ¹
Arthur Morel, after his apprenticeship, took a job on the electrical plant at Minton Pit. (explicit canon) ¹
The pit is drawn from Brinsley Colliery, where Lawrence's father Arthur worked and whose headstocks appear in the 1960 film; Wikipedia's Brinsley article gives the novel's name for it as Beggarlee, which the text does not support for Morel's pit. (MineArchive inference, disputed) ^1,2,3

Sources

(primary canon) Sons and Lovers (1913), full text — D. H. Lawrence; Project Gutenberg edition
(interpretation) Sons and Lovers — Wikipedia
(interpretation) Brinsley Colliery — Wikipedia

Record created: 9 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026