Bevercotes Colliery

Overview

Britain's first fully automated 'push-button' colliery — a coal face designed to be worked by one man at a console instead of a team underground, which promptly broke against the one thing no console could fix: bad roof.

History

Bevercotes was conceived by the National Coal Board as a showcase of high technology, planned as the world's first fully automated coal mine and sunk alongside Cotgrave as one of two brand-new Nottinghamshire collieries built in the 1960s. It went into production in July 1965, but was beset by problems from early on: the shaft lining failed, letting huge amounts of water through the concrete walls, and the colliery was effectively closed for about two years from 1964 to 1966 while repairs were carried out. Its automated coalface, in the Parkgate seam, was equipped as a Remotely Operated Longwall Face, or ROLF, with cutting, the hydraulic roof supports and the conveyor all worked from a single control console rather than by men on the face — a system also tried at the same time at Newstead and Ormonde collieries. At Bevercotes it failed after the face had advanced only a few metres, defeated by poor roof conditions that forced major additional roadway driveages to work around faulting the automated system could not accommodate. Much of the workforce, transferred elsewhere in Nottinghamshire during the two-year shutdown, proved reluctant to come back once production restarted, having settled at other local pits in the meantime. During the 1984-85 miners' strike, Bevercotes men voted roughly two-to-one against striking, and in October 1985 the pit voted by 57 per cent to leave the National Union of Mineworkers for the new Union of Democratic Mineworkers. The colliery closed on 7 May 1993 after 36 years of production.

Geology

Bevercotes worked the Parkgate seam of the East Midlands (Nottinghamshire) Coalfield's Coal Measures, ground affected by faulting severe enough to defeat the automated longwall system the colliery was built around — the roof simply did not hold well enough, or consistently enough, for equipment designed to run without men constantly assessing it underground.

Workings

A single-track, four-and-a-half-mile branch railway, opened in June 1960 ahead of the colliery itself, connected Bevercotes to the national network. Underground, the Remotely Operated Longwall Face automated the shearing machine, the hydraulic roof supports (chocks) and the armoured face conveyor, leaving only the ripping and stable-hole work — preparing the roadway ends of the face — manned in the conventional way, all controlled by one operator from a console in the gate road.

Closure

The colliery closed on 7 May 1993 after 36 years of production, part of the wider contraction of the Nottinghamshire coalfield in the early 1990s.

What remains

The former colliery site has been converted into a nature reserve; little industrial fabric survives above ground.

Little survives at the surface beyond the site's transformation into a nature reserve; the former colliery branch railway line is likewise disused.

Redevelopment

The site is now managed as a nature reserve.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

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

• Bevercotes was planned as the world's first fully automated 'push-button' colliery and went into production in July 1965, sunk alongside Cotgrave as one of two new Nottinghamshire collieries built in the 1960s. ¹
• Its shaft lining failed soon after sinking, letting large amounts of water through the concrete walls, and the colliery was effectively shut for about two years, 1964 to 1966, while repairs were made. ²
• The Parkgate seam coalface was equipped as a Remotely Operated Longwall Face, automating the shearer, hydraulic roof supports and conveyor from a single console; the system failed after only a few metres' advance because of poor roof conditions and faulting, unlike the otherwise similar trials at Newstead and Ormonde. ³
• Much of the workforce, relocated to other Nottinghamshire pits during the shutdown, proved reluctant to return once production resumed. ¹
• The colliery closed on 7 May 1993 after 36 years of production and the site was converted into a nature reserve. ¹

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this mine.

Sources

1. (primary) Bevercotes Colliery — Wikipedia
2. (primary) Bevercotes Colliery, Nottinghamshire, House of Commons, 1 August 1966 — Hansard
3. (secondary) Coalface Mechanisation through the Ages — Mining Heritage

Record created: 24 August 2026 · Last researched: 24 August 2026