Seymour Colliery

Overview

Seymour, near Woodthorpe outside Staveley, was a Staveley Coal and Iron Company pit named after one of the company's directors, as their pits usually were. It worked one seam, the Top Hard, and in the 1860s could send out 700 tons of locomotive coal a day. The company built a village of over a hundred houses beside it; the colliery was worked out and closed after about fifty years, and the houses were condemned and pulled down a dozen years after that.

History

Sinking began in 1855 and the colliery went into production three years later, in 1858, on ground surveyed as far back as 1837 for a proposed colliery with a proposed railway running north to what was then a proposed Midland Railway. It had one main shaft in the pit yard and a second fed by a surface tub road to the north-east, over Woodthorpe Road in the fields behind the church. The seam was the Top Hard, worked for machine and steam coal, and in the 1860s the pit was frequently turning out 700 tons a day of the locomotive coal the railway companies paid well for. At its height 1,100 tons a day came out of it.

The company built Seymour Cottages for the workforce: over a hundred brick houses in four parallel terraces, each with its own outbuildings, earth midden and allotment garden, one main room downstairs and two bedrooms up. A row of three at the bottom housed the colliery officials and was known, for obvious reasons, as gaffers' row, with a row of workshops below that. A small chapel stood beside the terraces, and the Albert Inn and Woodthorpe school both appear only in the colliery's era, so the company may well have built those too.

The Mines Inspectors' returns show 490 people in 1894, 608 in 1896 under the manager S. B. Gilroy with R. S. Knight as under-manager, and 630 by 1900, after which the numbers fall away steadily: 464 in 1905, 320 in 1910, 277 in 1915. The Derbyshire Times of 6 July 1918 reported the closure: after fifty years the pit was practically worked out, though few of the men would suffer for it since the company was finding them work at its other collieries. By then only about 52 miners were left, ninety with the surface hands. Those who moved went to Oxcroft, Ireland, Hartington and Markham.

The village outlasted the pit but not by much. A closure order was served by the council in 1929 on the ground that the houses were unfit for human habitation, and T. P. Wood's Almanac records the demolition as 15 April 1932. The order seems not to have been carried out to the letter: the 1937 to 1961 Ordnance Survey still shows two small blocks standing, and people who were at Woodthorpe school in the early 1950s remember visiting classmates who lived in the top row.

Geology

Seymour was sunk to the Top Hard, the seam that carried the east Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalfield and which the Derbyshire Times called a particularly good house coal. It was worked here for machine and steam coal and is the only seam the Mines Inspectors' returns record from this colliery at any date between 1894 and 1915.

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

Workings

One main shaft in the pit yard, with a second to the north-east reached by a surface tub road that crossed Woodthorpe Road into the fields behind the church. Shaft depths are not recorded.

Closure

The pit was practically worked out and closed in the first week of July 1918 after about fifty years. The Durham Mining Museum gives the closure as 1918 and the oldminer.co.uk account as around 1919; the Derbyshire Times report of 6 July 1918 settles it.

What remains

The site was a coal transhipment depot for R. J. Budge Mining, then lay derelict with the rail connection gone. It has since been landscaped for the extension of the Markham Vale development.

Nothing of the colliery. Of Seymour Cottages, the four terraces the company built, two small blocks were still standing into the 1960s despite the 1929 closure order.

Redevelopment

The colliery ground has been taken into the Markham Vale development.

Related mines

• Hartington Colliery — Both Staveley company pits, and Hartington took some of the Seymour workforce at the 1918 closure.
• Hollingwood Colliery — Another of the pits Richard Barrow sank at Staveley in the 1840s and 1850s and sold with the rest of the concern in 1863.
• Ireland Colliery — Both Staveley company pits, and Ireland took some of the Seymour workforce at the 1918 closure.
• Markham Colliery — Both Staveley Coal and Iron Company pits; Seymour men went to Markham among others when it closed in 1918.
• Speedwell Colliery, Staveley — Both sunk by Richard Barrow on his Staveley lease, sold together to the Staveley Coal and Iron Company in 1864, and worked out together around the turn of the century.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• Sinking began in 1855 and the colliery went into production in 1858. The Durham Mining Museum gives the opening as 1873, which the Derbyshire Times report of the 1918 closure contradicts: it describes a pit sunk 'some fifty years ago' with 'a remarkably good working life' behind it. (disputed) ^1,2

Recorded claims

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

• Sinking began in 1855 and the colliery went into production in 1858. The Durham Mining Museum gives the opening as 1873, which the Derbyshire Times report of the 1918 closure contradicts: it describes a pit sunk 'some fifty years ago' with 'a remarkably good working life' behind it. (disputed) ^1,2
• The colliery was capable of 700 tons a day of locomotive coal and did so frequently through the 1860s; at one point 1,100 tons a day were turned out of it. ²
• Seymour Cottages were over a hundred brick houses in four parallel terraces, each with outbuildings, an earth midden and an allotment garden. A closure order was served in 1929 and T. P. Wood's Almanac records demolition on 15 April 1932, but two small blocks are still shown on the 1937 to 1961 Ordnance Survey and were remembered standing in the early 1950s. ²
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Seymour' (catalogue 6803, Top Hard, dated 1918). ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Seymour Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Seymour — oldminer.co.uk
3. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: SEYMOUR — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority
4. (observational) Former Seymour Colliery prior to Redevelopment — Wikimedia Commons, Darren Haddock

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026