Tibshelf Colliery

Overview

Tibshelf, in east Derbyshire, was worked from 1864 by Charles Seely's Babbington Coal Company as two pairs of pits — the Bottom Pits, bought and deepened in 1864, and the Top Pits, sunk in 1891. It is remembered less for its coal than for its ambulance men: the first St John Ambulance classes attached to a colliery anywhere in the country were held here in 1878, and the corps they produced won a silver medal in 1884 for a wheeled stretcher of its own design.

History

Coal had been taken from Tibshelf's outcrops for local use since the middle ages. In 1553 Edward VI granted the manor of Tibshelf to St Thomas' Hospital in London, the grant naming 'all those coal pits in Tibshelf' among its appurtenances, and the hospital remained the mineral landlord into the industrial period; by 1831 it held about three-fifths of the parish, including a coal mine leased by the Chambers family. In 1864 Charles Seely bought the Bottom Pits, Nos. 1 and 2, from Richard Milward and Edward Storer, deepened the shafts, and leased the Deep Hard, Low Main and Black Shale seams from the hospital. From 1868 the company took over the wider Tibshelf coalfield and built the village that went with it — Elm Tree Bank, Sunny Bank, Prospect Terrace, Victoria Terrace, Primrose Terrace, Heathfield Terrace and St Thomas' Row — along with a colliery school in 1870, brickworks, coke ovens, a gas works, an isolation hospital and swimming baths. The Colliery Club of 1874 cost £2,000 and had a reading room, a smoking room, billiards and a cricket ground. Two more pits, the Top Pits, were opened in 1891; Kelly's Directory for that year puts the Seely collieries at Tibshelf at 2,000 men. The ambulance work began with Stuart Crawford Wardell, appointed mine engineer at Tibshelf in 1872 and later agent for all the Tibshelf and Birchwood pits. He held first aid classes for miners from 1872, five years before the St John Ambulance Association existed, and founded the Tibshelf Colliery St John Ambulance Corps in 1878 — the first brigade affiliated to a colliery in the country. Instruction was given by two local doctors, W. A. Stamford and F. W. Hutton. By 1884 three hundred volunteers had been certificated and the corps had won a silver medal at the International Health Exhibition in London for a wheeled stretcher designed to carry an injured man to the pit top without undue movement. In 1893 the Tibshelf, Birchwood and Babbington brigades travelled to Windsor Castle on a special train paid for by Seely and performed first aid exercises before Queen Victoria. Volunteers from the two Derbyshire corps went out to the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Boer War, and the reputation the district's stretcher bearers earned there is why so many Tibshelf men are on the village war memorial. The Mines Inspectors' returns show the four pits working the Tupton, Deep Hard and Silkstone seams and employing between them well over a thousand people from the 1890s to the 1930s: 483 at No. 1 and 650 at No. 2 in 1894; 620 at No. 1 in 1910; 517 at No. 3 in 1923. The pits were reorganised in 1911. Sir Charles Seely died in 1915 and both villages closed their collieries and schools for the day of the memorial services; Stuart and Katherine Wardell died of pneumonia within three weeks of each other in 1916, and the collieries stopped work at noon for the funeral. The post-war slump ended it. The four collieries and the brickworks went on short time, and Tibshelf came out in the General Strike of 1926 despite the company's good industrial relations, the Co-op and the Colliery Institute opening soup kitchens. The Bottom Pits were closed by flooding for nearly a year from 1934 and shut for good in 1936, their reserves worked out; the Top Pits followed in 1939. Over six hundred men lost secure work and drifted to Blackwell, Glapwell, Holmewood, Silverhill, Teversal and Sutton.

Geology

Tibshelf stands on an escarpment where the East Derbyshire coal measures outcrop at or close to the surface and dip eastwards beneath the Permian sandstones towards the Nottinghamshire border. The seams worked from the four pits were the Tupton, the Deep Hard and the Silkstone; the Low Main and Black Shale were also leased from St Thomas' Hospital in 1864. Impervious shales and mudstones between the coals hold the aquifers that made settlement here possible in the first place.

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

Workings

The colliery was worked as four pits returned separately to the Mines Inspectors. Nos. 1 and 2, the Bottom Pits, were an existing working bought in 1864 and deepened; Nos. 3 and 4, the Top Pits, were sunk in 1891. A 1915 return lists a No. 2a alongside No. 2, and by 1933 Nos. 2 and 4 were returned as included in Nos. 1 and 3. Shaft depths have not been found in the sources read for this record.

Closure

The Bottom Pits flooded in 1934 and stood for nearly a year, then closed permanently in 1936 having reached the limit of their reserves. The Top Pits closed in 1939, most of the men going to Glapwell.

What remains

Nothing of the collieries remains above ground. The colliery site, spoil tips and sidings, together with the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, were infilled to make the Five Pits Trail and its fishing ponds.

The industrial housing the company built has largely gone: Primrose Terrace and St Thomas' Row were condemned and demolished in the late 1960s. The old colliery schoolrooms on Newton Road survive as a social hub, and Enterprise House stands on the site of the swimming baths that closed in 1938.

Redevelopment

The Sawpit industrial estate was built on the former Top Pit site and taken in 1966 by SAPA, the Scandinavian Aluminium Profile Associates. Opencast working returned to the old ground on Doe Hill Lane from 1992 after an appeal to the Secretary of State overrode local objection; the restored land is now Doe Hill Country Park.

Related mines

• Babbington Colliery — Both worked by Charles Seely’s Babbington Coal Company, whose Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire brigades travelled together to Windsor Castle in 1893.
• Glapwell Colliery — Most of the Tibshelf men went to Glapwell when the Top Pits closed in 1939.

Nearby mines

• Teversal Colliery — 2.7 km NE, Nottinghamshire
• Silverhill Colliery — 3.3 km E, Nottinghamshire
• Lings Colliery — 4.3 km NW
• Holmewood Colliery — 5.0 km N
• Alfreton Colliery — 5.8 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.

• Stuart Crawford Wardell founded the first St John Ambulance brigade attached to a colliery at Tibshelf in 1878, having held first aid classes for miners there since 1872. In 1884 the corps won a silver medal at the International Health Exhibition for a wheeled stretcher of its own design. ¹
• The Bottom Pits closed in 1936 and the Top Pits in 1939. One line of the Somercotes History timeline gives the Top Pits as 1891 to 1903, which its own later entries and the Tibshelf Local History account both contradict. ^2,1
• Edward VI granted the manor of Tibshelf, including its coal pits, to St Thomas' Hospital in London in 1553, and the hospital was still the mineral landlord when Charles Seely leased the deeper seams in 1864. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) The Derbyshire Collieries Owned by the Seely Family — Somercotes History Society
2. (secondary) Historical Evolution of Tibshelf — Tibshelf Local History
3. (observational) Reclaimed land at Tibshelf Ponds (Geograph 5663203) — Geograph Britain and Ireland, Alan Walker
4. (secondary) Past Unforgotten - Tibshelf — Tibshelf Parish Council
5. (secondary) Tibshelf Colliery — Durham Mining Museum

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