New London Colliery

Overview

The Digby Colliery Company's second and larger Erewash valley pit, on the outskirts of Newthorpe near Eastwood, worked from about 1874 until 1937. With six hundred to eleven hundred men it was several times the size of the company's original Digby pit at Giltbrook, and the two were run together from the Digby offices until both closed in the 1930s. Its spoil heaps survive as a reclaimed hillside remembered locally as Shonky Bank.

History

New London Colliery was sunk by the Digby Colliery Company, the Giltbrook partnership headed by the Lenton tanner Thomas Bayley, on the outskirts of Newthorpe in the parish of Greasley; the company had already worked a small Newthorpe Colliery from 1863 to 1888 and its Digby pit from 1866. The fatality lists date the pit from 1874, and its first recorded deaths, in 1878 and 1880, were inquested at the Old White Bull at Giltbrook. By 1894 New London was the company's main producer, with 586 men underground and 49 on the surface under the certificated manager Granville Chambers, who also ran Digby; it employed around 600 to 700 through the 1900s and, after the company's sinking of Gedling Colliery east of Nottingham, reached 1,102 men in 1923 and 900 in 1933 under E. S. Fawcett, who by then managed both Erewash pits. The workforce came from Kimberley, Giltbrook, Newthorpe, Awsworth and Eastwood, and the inquests into its accidents sat in the Digby Colliery offices, the Giltbrook Miners' Institute and the district's inns and chapels. The Nottinghamshire Archives hold the company's records of 'New London and Digby, at Giltbrook Colliery' for 1893 to 1938, the two pits being administered as one concern. Both were considered uneconomic by the 1930s: New London closed in 1937 and the 1940 Colliery Year Book records the Digby and New London pits as closed, with Gedling passing to B. A. Collieries Ltd. Local writers have noted that the young D. H. Lawrence's Eastwood was ringed by pits of exactly this kind, and a passage in Sons and Lovers describing a colliery standing 'still and black among the corn-fields' has been applied locally to New London, though Lawrence does not name it.

Geology

Worked seams of the Middle Coal Measures on the Nottinghamshire side of the Erewash valley, the same ground as the company's Digby pit a mile to the south-east, which worked the Deep Hard, Deep Soft and Tupton seams; the seams New London itself worked are not named in the sources read, which give only the company's combined list of Deep Hard, Deep Soft, Tupton, Silkstone and Top Hard.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (well documented example)

Workings

A shafted colliery with a mineral railway connection, recorded by the Historic Environment Record together with a mineral railway in Greasley parish. Its fatality record shows the usual pattern of an Erewash pit of its period: falls of roof and coal at the face, boys run over by tubs, an underground staple pit, coal-cutting machinery by 1913 and electrocution on the surface the same year, and railway wagons under the screens.

Closure

Closed in 1937. The Digby company's local historians and the healeyhero fatality register both give that year, and the 1940 Colliery Year Book records the Digby and New London pits as closed, the company keeping only Gedling. Both Erewash pits were old, small and by then dwarfed by Gedling, and are described as uneconomic by the 1930s.

What remains

The pit has gone but its spoil heaps remain, reclaimed by nature on the edge of Newthorpe and, according to local accounts, used for off-road driving; a resident recalled the tailings bank still smoking for years after demolition. The Historic Environment Record holds the site as a disused colliery centred on an area about 400 m across from the 1938 Ordnance Survey.

Spoil heaps only; no buildings or headgear are known to survive.

Related mines

• Digby Colliery — Both Digby Colliery Company pits, run from the same offices and archived together as 'New London and Digby, at Giltbrook Colliery'; New London was the larger of the two and both closed in the 1930s.
• Gedling Colliery — Same owner: the Digby Colliery Company's profits from its Erewash pits went into sinking Gedling from 1899, after which Gedling dwarfed both.

Nearby mines

• Digby Colliery — 1.1 km S
• Moorgreen Colliery — 1.8 km NW
• Brinsley Colliery — 3.5 km NW
• Cossall Colliery — 3.6 km S
• Strelley Colliery — 5.1 km SE

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 colliery was worked from about 1874 and closed in 1937. ^1,2
• New London employed 635 in 1894, 639 in 1900, 702 in 1905, 613 in 1910, 1,102 in 1923 and 900 in 1933, always well above the company's Digby pit. ³
• Granville Chambers managed both New London and Digby in the 1890s, W. Walker in 1900 and E. S. Fawcett in 1923 and 1933. ³
• The 1940 Colliery Year Book records that the Digby and New London pits had been closed and Gedling taken over by B. A. Collieries Ltd. ³
• Nottinghamshire Archives hold the company's records of 'New London and Digby, at Giltbrook Colliery' covering 1893 to 1938. ⁴
• The Historic Environment Record holds the disused colliery centred at SK 48697 46186 from the 1938 Ordnance Survey. ⁵
• The spoil heaps survive, reclaimed by nature, and are used for off-road driving; a local resident recalled the tailings bank smoking for years after demolition. ⁶
• The Digby Colliery Company had earlier worked a Newthorpe Colliery, sunk in 1863 and closed in 1888. ⁷
• Doubleday's 1952 account notes that a new colliery area had been created at New London, extending into Kimberley parish. ⁸

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) New London Colliery fatalities 1874-1937 — healeyhero.co.uk
2. (secondary) Eastwood pits (healeyhero.co.uk) — healeyhero.co.uk
3. (secondary) Durham Mining Museum: Digby Colliery Co., Ltd. (Colliery Year Book extracts 1894-1940) — Durham Mining Museum
4. (primary) Nottinghamshire Archives NCB 4/3/61: New London and Digby, at Giltbrook Colliery, 1893-1938 (National Archives Discovery) — The National Archives
5. (primary) Nottinghamshire HER monument M2388: New London Colliery, Greasley — Nottinghamshire Historic Environment Record
6. (secondary) The Greasley Engine and other Giltbrook mining relics (Tales from Watnall Hall, 2023) — Watnall Hall blog
7. (secondary) West Notts. Brickworks: Digby Colliery — East Midlands Named Bricks
8. (secondary) Notts Villages: Newthorpe (E. Doubleday, Nottinghamshire Guardian, 1952) — Nottinghamshire History

Record created: 9 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026