Langwith Colliery

Overview

The Sheepbridge company's big Derbyshire pit on the Top Hard seam, sunk from 1876 and employing two thousand men at its height. It kept pumping for four years after it stopped cutting coal, to keep the water out of Creswell.

History

The Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company began sinking deep shafts at Langwith in 1876 and struck coal in 1878; the Durham Mining Museum's returns give the sinking as 1878-86 and the shaft as 536 yards deep. Two hundred houses went up at Whaley Thorns for the men. By 1896 twelve hundred were working there and the pit was turning out 2,500 tons a day. It worked the Top Hard seam and nothing else for the whole of its first forty years in the official returns, with employment above a thousand from 1894 onwards, 1,940 by 1923 and 2,000 by 1933. The National Coal Board took it in 1947, when 1,650 men produced 415,000 tons. A reorganisation costing two and a quarter million pounds followed in the 1950s, and by the Board's own account of 1967 eleven hundred men were producing around 750,000 tons a year from the fully mechanised Main Bright and Clowne seams. Production ceased in 1978. The shafts were kept afterwards to pump water and stop Creswell colliery flooding. The colliery spent the First World War with a secret next-door neighbour. From September 1915 a munitions factory was built beside it, sited for the Langwith By-Product Plant's gas and the railway the coal trade had brought, and it made 2,173 tons of ammonium perchlorate for sea mines between June 1917 and December 1918. It employed up to eleven hundred people at wages the collieries could not match, which the Sheepbridge company resented, and everyone who worked there was bound by the Official Secrets Act; photographs of its construction stayed closed at the National Archives until the 1960s or later. The factory closed in 1922 and the By-Product Plant in 1927, after which Sheepbridge bought the ground to expand the colliery and, judging it not worth building on, tipped on it.

Geology

The Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire concealed coalfield. The pit worked the Top Hard seam — the same coal the Barnsley seam becomes south of the Yorkshire border — throughout its early life, and the Main Bright and Clowne seams by the 1960s.

Workings

Deep shafts 536 yards down, sunk between 1876 and 1886. The colliery was reorganised in the 1950s at a cost of two and a quarter million pounds and worked fully mechanised faces thereafter.

Closure

Production ceased in 1978. The colliery was then used to pump water to protect Creswell colliery from flooding.

What remains

Poulter Country Park occupies the colliery's tipping ground next to the railway station at Langwith-Whaley Thorns — the same land the First World War munitions factory and the By-Product Plant had stood on before Sheepbridge bought it. The rows built for the men in the 1870s are still there.

The reshaped spoil tip, now a country park, and the colliery village at Whaley Thorns.

Redevelopment

Poulter Country Park on the spoil tip.

Related mines

• Creswell Colliery — After Langwith stopped producing coal in 1978 its shafts were kept to pump water, specifically to stop Creswell colliery flooding — a physical connection through the water in the ground rather than a shared owner.

Nearby mines

• Shirebrook Colliery — 3.0 km SW
• Warsop Main Colliery — 3.3 km SE, Nottinghamshire
• Creswell Colliery — 3.7 km N
• Bolsover Colliery — 6.7 km W
• Pleasley Colliery — 6.9 km SW

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

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

• The Durham Mining Museum records the sinking as begun in 1878-86 and the shaft as 536 yards deep, under the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company, working the Top Hard seam in every official return from 1894 to 1915 and producing manufacturing and steam coal. ¹
• Employment ran above a thousand from the first return in 1894 — 1,327 that year, 1,076 of them below ground — and climbed to 1,940 by 1923 and 2,000 by 1933. At nationalisation in 1947 there were 1,650, of whom 1,200 worked underground, producing 415,000 tons. ¹
• The National Coal Board's own leaflet 'Coal in North Derbyshire' of April 1967 describes Langwith as sunk 1878-86 and 536 yards deep, reorganised in the 1950s at a cost of two and a quarter million pounds, with eleven hundred men producing around 750,000 tons a year from the fully mechanised Main Bright and Clowne seams. ¹
• The Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company of Chesterfield, an ironmaking and colliery concern of the north Derbyshire coalfield, owned Langwith from the sinking until nationalisation in 1947. ^1,2
• Building started in September 1915 on a secret munitions factory beside the colliery. It was put there for the Langwith By-Product Plant, which made the gas the factory needed for the chemicals that went into the sea mines of the First World War, and for the railway the coal industry had brought to the district in the first place. The By-Product Plant was given £1,145 — about £67,500 in today's money — to buy the neighbouring twenty-seven acres from Earl Bathurst on the War Department's behalf, on the pretext of helping the war effort. ³
• The factory employed between eight hundred and eleven hundred people, some travelling in from as far as Kirkby-in-Ashfield on special trains, at an average of three pounds a week — well above what the local industries paid. Many women took munitions work on those wages as a way to improve their standard of living, and it was one of the few kinds of war work considered acceptable for working-class women. The neighbouring collieries and the By-Product Plant saw the factory as taking their workforce away, and the plant had had no real choice about the land next door being sold over its head. ³
• Production started in October 1916, later than the February deadline because the skilled workers to build the chemical baths could not be found and local women and a hundred and fifty soldiers had to be trained instead. It reached target only in June 1917, and between then and December 1918 produced 2,173 tons of ammonium perchlorate. The factory wound down and closed in 1922; the By-Product Plant, its main customer gone, closed in 1927, and the Sheepbridge company bought the land to expand its workings at Langwith Colliery. Thought not worth building on, it became a tipping site — the ground that is now part of Poulter Country Park. ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Langwith Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Co — Grace's Guide to British Industrial History
3. (secondary) Langwith Colliery and its disputes with the War Department — Derbyshire Record Office

Record created: 6 September 2026 · Last researched: 10 September 2026