Barlborough Colliery

Overview

The Staveley Coal and Iron Company's colliery at Barlborough, near Clowne, working the Top Hard coal with up to 800 men from two shafts around 1900.

History

Barlborough Colliery lay near Clowne, Derbyshire, and belonged to the Staveley Coal and Iron Company, working the Top Hard coal for manufacturing and steam use. Deaths are recorded there from 1878, when a screenman was crushed against a post while coupling a slack waggon to the incline chain as the engine started. In 1894 it employed 612 men. A second shaft, No. 2, was being sunk in 1896 with 44 men, and by 1900 both were raising coal, No. 1 alone employing 801.

Falls of roof in faulty ground were the commonest cause of death. In November 1900 a stallman was fatally struck by a fall as he and two others walked along a roadway to their work, and on 11 August 1906 two old datallers, William Hemingway Jarvis, 69, and William Brocklehurst, 68, sent to build a pack where a new road crossed an old one, were killed when the whole roof at the junction came in just after they had set an extra prop. Boys died on the haulage: a horse driver of 14 in 1898, crushed when his horse took a wrong turn, and a belt boy of 13 in 1913, struck by a gravitating tub on a gantry with too little clearance. The colliery employed 797 men in 1923. Abandonment plans of Barlborough Nos. 1 and 2 are dated 1928, and only 14 men were returned there in 1937, when the workings had passed to the Barlborough Common Coal Company.

Geology

The Top Hard coal.

Workings

Nos. 1 and 2 shafts (No. 2 sunk from 1896), stall workings, horse and gravity haulage, screens with a surface incline.

Closure

Abandonment plans of Nos. 1 and 2 are dated 1928; a small working under the Barlborough Common Coal Company had 14 men in 1937.

What remains

Unknown.

Related mines

• New Cottam Colliery — Neighbouring collieries at Barlborough.

Disasters & major incidents

• Barlborough Colliery roof fall, 1906
  11 August 1906 · Collapse / Roof Fall · 2 fatalities
  On 11 August 1906 two elderly datallers at the Staveley Coal and Iron Company's Barlborough No. 1 Colliery, near Clowne, were killed when the roof at the junction of a new road and an old one collapsed on them as they prepared to build a pack.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Barlborough Colliery, near Clowne, belonged to the Staveley Coal and Iron Co. ^1,2
• Barlborough employed 612 men in 1894; No. 1 employed 801 in 1900, and No. 2 was sinking in 1896. ¹
• On 11 August 1906 two datallers building a pack where a new road crossed an old one at Barlborough No. 1 were killed when the roof at the junction collapsed. ^1,2
• In November 1900 a stallman at Barlborough was fatally injured by a fall of roof as he walked to his work. ³
• Abandonment plans of Barlborough Nos. 1 and 2 are dated 1928. ⁴

Sources

1. (primary) Barlboro' No. 2 Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) NMRS mining deaths: William Hemingway Jarvis, Barlborough No. 1, 1906 — Northern Mine Research Society (mining deaths database)
3. (secondary) NMRS mining deaths: Joseph Grundys, Barlborough, 1900 — Northern Mine Research Society (mining deaths database)
4. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plan 21910468: Barlborough Nos. 1 & 2, abandoned 1928 — British Geological Survey

Record created: 21 October 2026 · Last researched: 21 October 2026