Sherwood Colliery

Overview

Sherwood, at Mansfield Woodhouse, was sunk from 1902 and worked for ninety years, outliving most of its neighbours. Two men were killed in its shaft within weeks of the sinking starting. It exhausted the Top Hard and the Dunsil and went on into the Deep Soft, set a world tunnelling record in 1975 and a British record for output from a single face in 1978, and was shut at the end of January 1992.

History

Charles Walker and John F. Eaton of Doncaster tendered in 1901 to sink two shafts for the Sherwood Colliery Company, materials and equipment included. About fifty men cleared and prepared the ground for sidings by the railway in the parish of Mansfield Woodhouse, and at a formal ceremony on Monday 10 February 1902 a metal bucket lifted the first load of soil from the site of the upshaft. The dignitaries included the managing director Francis Newman Ellis, the Duke of Portland's land agent and the clerk of Nottinghamshire County Council. The residents of Woodhouse Road were displeased by the noise of the blasting. Within weeks the sinking had killed two men. On the evening of Tuesday 22 April 1902 a thirty-pound balance weight attached to the doors closing the top of Shaft One fell about thirty-five yards onto the sinkers Albert Wood of Mansfield Woodhouse and Edmund Simmonds of Mansfield. Wood was killed outright and Simmonds died of his injuries at about four the next morning. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death (see Disasters, below). First coal was reached in September 1902, and in 1903, some 430 yards down, the sinkers reached seams more than five feet thick and flew a flag from the headstocks. Both shafts were twenty feet across and mostly brick-lined. The Top Hard was worked from 1903 until it was exhausted in 1959; the Dunsil was opened in 1916 to supplement it and worked through to 1957; from 1959 production came from the Deep Soft and later the Deep Hard, Piper, Yard and Black Shale. A brickyard beside the pit used the shale, and by 1925 was turning out about 8.5 million bricks a year before closing in 1958. The company built the life of the place around the pit. A Lads' Club from 1921 gave physical training and recreation to about eighty boys. A sun ray clinic with mercury vapour and radiant heat lamps opened in 1927, and by 1929 the urban district council was sending mothers and children from its own welfare centre there for artificial sunlight treatment. Pithead baths, a canteen, swimming baths and a fully equipped medical centre all opened in 1934, in what may have been Ellis's last public duty before his death that October. Clubs carrying the colliery's name included bowls, chess, cricket, football, swimming and water polo. The late record is one of records. In 1975 Sherwood men set a world speed record for underground tunnelling, driving 226.7 yards of roadway fourteen feet by ten. In the week ending 22 May 1978 the 120s face in the Deep Hard and Piper produced 27,461 tonnes in five days, the highest tonnage ever from a single face in a British coal mine. In 1987 the pit broke the European record for thin seam mining, a month after Mansfield Colliery had set it, taking 20,732 tonnes from one face in a seam a metre high. Five million pounds went into ventilation and haulage in 1980 and six million into access tunnels and an underground bunker in 1982. British Coal confirmed in April 1991 that the colliery would close within two years; it closed at the end of January 1992, ninety years after the first sod was turned.

Geology

Sherwood worked the Nottinghamshire coalfield at Mansfield Woodhouse. The Top Hard carried it from 1903 to 1959 and the Dunsil from 1916 to 1957; after that came the Deep Soft, about 200 yards below the Top Hard, and later the Deep Hard, Piper, Yard and Black Shale. The shale raised as waste fed the colliery brickyard.

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

Workings

Two shafts, each twenty feet in diameter and mostly brick-lined, sunk 459 yards. Steam winding gear served them until it was replaced by electric winders in 1982 and 1983. There were up to eight boilers at different times, with a chimney eight feet across and 150 feet high. Overhead buckets carried rubble across Debdale Lane to the tip until they could not cope, and were replaced by a six-foot gantry bridge of twenty-eight foot span carrying a conveyor, itself removed in the early 1980s.

Closure

British Coal confirmed the closure in April 1991 and the colliery shut at the end of January 1992, sooner than the two years first announced. A core workforce stayed on for salvage and safety work and the demolition of the headstocks before the shafts were sealed.

What remains

The site was demolished shortly after closure. A new estate was built over it in 2012, with a new road layout, traffic lights and side streets covering any evidence of the colliery. The spoil heap has been landscaped and carries a footpath, part of one of the Mansfield Woodhouse heritage trails.

Nothing of the colliery itself. A winding wheel monument was installed in 2011 in tribute to the men who worked there.

Redevelopment

Housing, built over the colliery site in 2012.

Related mines

• Pleasley Colliery — Neighbouring Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border pits; the Sherwood spoil heap is visible from the landscaped Pleasley tip.

Nearby mines

• Mansfield Colliery — 3.3 km E
• Pleasley Colliery — 4.4 km NW, Derbyshire
• Silverhill Colliery — 5.6 km W
• Warsop Main Colliery — 5.6 km N
• Shirebrook Colliery — 5.8 km N, Derbyshire

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.

• A National Coal Board leaflet of April 1967 describes the pit as sunk in 1902-3 and 459 yards deep, having exhausted the Top Hard and Dunsil, with 900 men then producing over 650,000 tons a year from the Deep Soft, 200 yards below the Top Hard. ¹
• In the week ending 22 May 1978 the men on the 120s face in the Deep Hard and Piper produced 27,461 tonnes in five days, the highest tonnage ever produced from a single coal face in a British coal mine. ²
• In 1975 Sherwood miners set a world speed record for underground tunnelling, completing 226.7 yards of roadway fourteen feet by ten, part of a new tunnel some 1,200 yards long driven as a roadway for the 108s face. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Sherwood Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Sherwood Colliery — The Old Mansfield Woodhouse Society
3. (observational) Sherwood Colliery, Mansfield Woodhouse — Wikimedia Commons, Chris Allen

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