Underwood Colliery

Overview

Underwood, on the Selston side of Eastwood, was one of the Barber Walker pits in the country D. H. Lawrence grew up in. Coal had been got here for centuries before the firm took the working over in 1728, and its evidence to the Children's Employment Commission of 1842 describes men and boys let down 140 yards four at a time on a flat rope, with no safety lamps. A fire in the workings in April 1874 killed two men who went in to free the horses.

History

The Selston or Underwood pit goes back centuries. Barber Walker and Company took it over in 1728, when it was probably no more than outcrop or opencast working, and sank a vertical shaft there in 1831. The pit was 140 yards deep, and the men were let down and up four at a time on a flat rope. They had no Davy lamps; the Children's Employment Commission of 1842, which covered this pit, recorded no accidents in the two years before it reported, and found Barber and Walker working twelve shafts with 101 children under thirteen among the workforce. The company's own history runs back further still. Barber and Company had collieries at Eastwood and Langley Mill in 1700, and by 1800 the firm was Barber Walker and Co. In 1832, at a meeting at the Sun Inn in Eastwood, it put up £10,000 of the £32,000 subscribed to promote an Erewash Valley Railway. By 1872 its network took in Eastwood, Cotmanhay, Hill Top, Watnall, New Watnall, Beggarlee, Underwood, High Park, Moorgreen and Brinsley. Thomas Barber, who died in 1874, had been head of the firm; his son Thomas, who died in 1893, spent about £3,000 building an Institute at Underwood for the firm's workpeople, opened shortly after his death. In April 1874 the workings caught fire (see Disasters, below), and two men who went down to free the horses died of the gas. The inquest that followed is one of the fullest records of the pit that survives: the deputy underviewer describing his round through the workings, the boys' candles stuck to the side of the roadway with clay, the manager's opinion that the timber in the stone heading had been set alight on purpose rather than by accident. Three dates are on record for this ground and they do not sit in one line. Healey Hero has Barber Walker taking the working over in 1728 and sinking a vertical shaft in 1831. The Durham Mining Museum gives the colliery as opened in 1855 and closed in 1885, and the last death it records here is John William Simpson, a driver of thirteen run over by full tubs on 12 December 1885. Mining Heritage lists Selston, in brackets Underwood, among the new collieries the firm sank around Eastwood in the 1860s and 1870s, in 1875 — after High Park in 1860, Moorgreen in 1865, Watnall in 1871 and Brinsley in 1872. The likeliest reading is that an old shallow working and a later deep sinking both carried the name, but no source read here says so, and this record does not assert it. The firm itself is older than any of those dates. The Barbers had been in the coal business for about a century before Thomas Barber and Thomas Walker joined forces in the late eighteenth century, having come into the Fletcher family's mining interests through a marriage in 1731 and, later, through the bankruptcy of the inventor John Barber in the 1780s. In 1790 the Earl of Stamford leased them the coal under several liberties of Newthorpe and Awsworth for twenty-one years, and a forty-seven year lease at Strelley and Bilborough followed in 1791. Eastwood Hall, the Walker family residence, became the company's administrative headquarters in 1917, the old offices on Mansfield Road having been outgrown once the firm moved into South Yorkshire at Bentley in 1908 and Harworth in 1916. After nationalisation the Hall was the National Coal Board's East Midlands No. 5 Area headquarters until 1966, and Barber Walker itself went into voluntary liquidation in 1954.

Geology

Underwood worked the Nottinghamshire coalfield on the Erewash side of the county, where the coal measures lie shallow enough that the ground here was got by outcrop or opencast working before a shaft was ever sunk. No seam names have been found in the sources read for this record. The 1874 inquest describes a stone heading and a stone fault in the workings, and a goaf behind.

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

Workings

A vertical shaft sunk in 1831 to 140 yards, with men lowered four at a time on a flat rope and no safety lamps in use at the time of the 1842 Commission. The 1874 inquest names an Underwood shaft and an upcast, a Willey Lane road and shaft, underground stables on the return, and an underground office, with the boys working by naked candles stuck to the side of the roadway with clay.

Closure

The Durham Mining Museum gives the closure as 1885, and its last recorded death here is in December of that year.

What remains

No account of the colliery site as it stands today has been found in the sources read for this record, and nothing is claimed here about what survives.

Related mines

• Brinsley Colliery — Both Barber Walker pits in the Eastwood group, and both in the country D. H. Lawrence grew up in.

Nearby mines

• Brinsley Colliery — 1.6 km S
• Moorgreen Colliery — 2.8 km S
• Pye Hill Colliery — 2.8 km NW
• New London Colliery — 4.6 km S
• Ormonde Colliery — 5.1 km SW, Derbyshire

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Disasters & major incidents

• Underwood Colliery fire
  12 April 1874 · Fire · 2 fatalities
  Underwood Colliery was found to be on fire on the Sunday morning of 12 April 1874. Two men went down at about eleven o'clock to save the horses, were warned they would meet firedamp, and went anyway. Neither came back. Two more who followed them were brought out exhausted. The inquest jury found death from choke damp caused by the firing of the woodwork in a stone heading.

Recorded claims

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

• Three dates are given and no source reconciles them. Healey Hero has Barber Walker taking the Selston or Underwood working over in 1728, when it was probably outcrop or opencast, and sinking a vertical shaft in 1831. The Durham Mining Museum gives the colliery as opened in 1855. Mining Heritage puts the sinking of Selston, in brackets Underwood, at 1875, among the new pits of the 1860s and 1870s. The 1842 Children's Employment Commission covered a 140-yard shaft here, which rules out both 1855 and 1875 as the start of working on this ground. (disputed) ^1,2,3
• Underwood was included in the Children's Employment Commission of 1842. The pit was 140 yards deep and workers were lowered and raised four at a time on a flat rope, without Davy lamps. No accidents had been recorded at the pit in the two years before the Commission reported, and Barber and Walker then worked twelve shafts employing 101 children under the age of thirteen. ²
• Thomas Barber, who died in 1893, built an Institute at Underwood for the firm's workpeople at a cost of about £3,000; it was opened shortly after his death. ⁴
• The Barbers came into the Fletcher family's coalmining interests through a marriage in 1731 and through the bankruptcy of the inventor John Barber in the 1780s. Thomas Barber of Derby and Thomas Walker of Bilborough took a twenty-one year lease of the coal under several liberties of Newthorpe and Awsworth from the Earl of Stamford in 1790, and a forty-seven year lease at Strelley and Bilborough in 1791. ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Underwood Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Underwood — Healey Hero
3. (secondary) Eastwood Hall - The Walker Family Dynasty — Mining Heritage
4. (secondary) Men of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (1924): manufacturers, Thomas Bayley — Nottinghamshire History (Robert Mellors)
5. (secondary) Underwood Colliery, 12 April 1874 — Durham Mining Museum

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