New Hucknall Colliery

Overview

The New Hucknall Colliery Company's pit at Huthwaite, sunk from 1876, which employed over 1,800 in 1923 and closed in February 1982.

History

New Hucknall Colliery stood at Huthwaite, near Sutton-in-Ashfield, on the Nottinghamshire side of the coalfield's western edge. It was sunk by the New Hucknall Colliery Company between 1876 and 1887 and opened in 1877, taking its name from the older Hucknall Colliery, a drift at the bottom of Blackwell Road that had been worked for about fifty years until flooding closed it. The new pit employed about 500 at first, and the village grew from a few hundred people to over 2,000 by 1881.

It had three pits: No. 1 worked the Top Hard and later the Waterloo, No. 2 the Deep Hard and No. 3 the Tupton. By 1912 the workforce was over 1,300, and in 1923 it was 1,830. In 1944 the company joined the Blackwell company as N. H. and B. Collieries, and in 1947 the pit passed to the National Coal Board, with 579 men raising 190,000 tons that year. An NCB leaflet of 1967 gives it as 475 yards deep, with 600 men producing 330,000 tons a year from the Piper seam, 90 per cent of it cut by machine.

New Hucknall Colliery closed in February 1982, one of the closures of the early 1980s that left the village with high unemployment.

Geology

Nottinghamshire Coal Measures: the Top Hard, Deep Hard, Tupton and Waterloo seams, and later the Piper.

Workings

Three pits, Nos. 1, 2 and 3, sunk between 1876 and 1887 and later deepened to 475 yards; heavily mechanised by the 1960s.

Closure

Closed in February 1982; the spoil tip plan is dated July 1982.

What remains

A pair of winding-wheel halves stands in Huthwaite as a memorial to the colliery.

Two halves of a pithead winding wheel set up beside a street in Huthwaite.

Recorded claims

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

• New Hucknall Colliery was sunk between 1876 and 1887 and opened in 1877, at first employing about 500. ^1,2
• By 1912 the workforce was over 1,300; in 1923 it was 1,830. ^1,2
• In 1967 the pit was 475 yards deep, with 600 men producing 330,000 tons a year from the Piper seam. ¹
• The colliery closed in February 1982. ^1,3

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) New Hucknall Colliery (Durham Mining Museum) — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Huthwaite (Wikipedia) — Wikipedia
3. (primary) BGS mine plan: NEW HUCKNALL, spoil tip, 19 July 1982 — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

Record created: 25 October 2026 · Last researched: 25 October 2026