Tevershall Colliery

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	Tevershall pit, Tevershall Collieries, New London Colliery
Setting	Lady Chatterley's Lover (D. H. Lawrence)
Location	Beside Tevershall village, which begins almost at the park gates of Wragby Hall, in the coal-and-iron Midlands of the novel; the pit chimney is visible from the house.
Type	Coal
Worked	Not dated. Already an old pit when the novel opens in the years after the First World War, and once the best in the country. – Not closed within the novel, but running thin and expected to shut within a few years; its sister pit New London is expected to go first.
Extent	Two collieries, Tevershall itself and New London, owned by the Tevershall Colliery Company, with a pit-bank that had been burning for years.

Overview

The Chatterley family's pit in D. H. Lawrence's novel: an old and once famous colliery at the park gates of Wragby Hall, its spoil-bank burning for years, its best days over and its men drifting to the new chemical works at Stacks Gate, until Sir Clifford goes down it to try to pull it out of the hole.

History

Connie Chatterley comes to Wragby Hall and sees from its windows the chimney of Tevershall pit with its clouds of steam and smoke, and the village trailing a mile of begrimed brick houses from the park gates. The pit-bank has been burning for years and would cost thousands to put out, so it burns, and when the wind is wrong the house fills with the sulphurous stench of it; the rattle of the screens, the puff of the winding engine and the whistle of the colliery locomotives carry up to the house. Between the hall and the village there is no communication at all. The Tevershall Colliery Company is, in the village's phrase, really Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, who made a trust of himself during the war boom.

Mrs Bolton, the parish nurse, is the pit's own history. Her husband Ted was killed in it twenty-two years before, at Christmas, leaving her with two children; it was the company that gave her the parish nursing. From her Clifford learns that Tevershall is running thin: there are only the two collieries, Tevershall and New London, Tevershall had once been a famous mine and made famous money but its best days are over, and New London was never rich. The men are leaving for Stacks Gate, three miles off, where the new works opened after the war make more from chemical by-products than from coal and have built the men fair mansions, and for Whiteover; New England and Colwick Wood have already shut, with bushes growing over the pit-head and the rails red with rust. The older men dread the new deep mechanised mines and the iron men, the coal-cutting machines, and say Tevershall is a sinking ship. Under her influence Clifford, who has lived as a writer, takes a new interest in the pits, feels himself the real boss of Tevershall, goes down the pit day after day and puts the general, overhead and underground managers and the engineers through a mill, set on pulling Tevershall out of the hole with modern coal-mining and on winning. Even on strike days the fan wheels never stood, except when the ponies were fetched up.

Workings

A deep colliery worked in shifts with a winding engine, screens, a locomotive railway and shunting trucks, and pit ponies below ground; the newer pits around it were going over to coal-cutting machinery, which Tevershall's older men feared. No seam or depth is given.

Closure

Expected rather than reached: the village says Tevershall is done and will shut within a few years, and Clifford's technical campaign is his answer to that.

What became of it

Working, in decline, at the novel's end.

Canon & adaptations

None within the book. The novel was published in Italy in 1928 and not openly in Britain until the 1960 obscenity trial; the Wikipedia article notes Lawrence drew the mining country from his own background in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, but the text itself names no real place.

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.

Tevershall pit stands beside Wragby Hall, its chimney and burning pit-bank visible and smellable from the house, with the village beginning almost at the park gates. (explicit canon) ¹
The Tevershall Colliery Company was in effect Sir Geoffrey Chatterley, and Clifford inherits the pits. (explicit canon) ^1,2
The company had only two collieries, Tevershall and New London; Tevershall had once been famous and its best days were over, and the men were leaving for Stacks Gate and Whiteover. (explicit canon) ¹
Mrs Bolton's husband Ted was killed in the pit twenty-two years before the novel, at Christmas, leaving two children. (explicit canon) ¹
Clifford takes up the technical running of the pits, going down day after day and driving the managers and engineers, determined to pull Tevershall out of the hole. (explicit canon) ^1,2

Sources

(primary canon) Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), full text — D. H. Lawrence; Project Gutenberg ebook 73144 (public domain in the USA), read in full
(interpretation) Lady Chatterley's Lover — Wikipedia — Wikipedia

Record created: 16 October 2026 · Last researched: 16 October 2026