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Coal in North Derbyshire

The Derbyshire towns of Alfreton and Chesterfield are gateways as it were to the coalfield as well as to rolling upland country and the Peak District; an imaginary line drawn between the two towns (then continued down to a point midway between Ilkeston and Derby) represents roughly the western boundary of the coalfield, the first of several that 'lean' outwards from the Pennine spine. It might seem that the Derbyshire of steel and coal, and the Derbyshire of Chatsworth and Haddon Hall, secluded spa resorts and trout streams known to Isaac Walton, are in violent contrast. On the contrary they have much in common, including a long history of mining activity. The uplands differ only from present day industrial Derbyshire (which has large tracts of pleasantly rural countryside) in that one has for the most part finished with mining (of lead and silver, copper and the precious fluorspar called Blue John) while the other still busies itself with abundant reserves of coal. A mining tradition which began when Roman aristocrats and emperors paid out fortunes for vases of Blue John has moved down from the hills to exploit rich coal measures that helped to warm Victorian London and are still a rich national asset.

Geology

Exposed on the western side these measures dip gradually to the east where they become concealed beneath more recently deposited rocks; the field is geologically continuous with the Yorkshire coalfield and several of its pits rub shoulders with Yorkshire neighbours and one at least works Yorkshire seams. But the coal changes in character near the county boundary and for this reason seam names are different.

The seams have their maximum development in the west and especially the south-west of the area, where intensive mining began. Elsewhere the structure of the measures, more complex than in the adjacent Nottinghamshire field, is complicated by faults and folds, frequently in a north-west and south-east direction. This results in mining problems. The original reserves were very large indeed and collieries were often sunk close together. A long history of mining means that the remaining seams in the older western part, while not exhausted, are now rather limited.

History

The western outcrop twice played an important part in the development of the coalfield, first as long ago as the 13th century when the shallow deposits around Alfreton and Swanwick (where the two modern collieries still produce ¾-million tons a year between them) were worked to supply local needs; second when George Stephenson's navvies constructing an early railway tunnel at Clay Cross a few miles north of Alfreton (in 1837) cut through some of the seams. Prior to this, lack of transport had prevented large-scale development, although Derbyshire maltsters were using coke made from Derbyshire coal as early as the 17th Century. The railways changed all this. By 1840 the first supplies of Clay Cross coal had reached London via railway and then canal; soon afterwards the direct rail link led to rapid expansion and by the 1880's the Capital was consuming six million tons of railborne coal a year, roughly half of it from the Derbyshire coalfield. When iron was found in the coalfield there was further expansion. Exploitation of the Top Hard Seam, a good steam coal, began in the 1890's, and by 1913 this one seam was producing a quarter of the coalfield's total output.

Mechanisation

As a result of long and intensive mining a dozen older collieries have been exhausted in recent years; others have been united in concentration schemes under which the combined output will surface at a central point; and there has been considerable investment in colliery reconstruction. Although conditions hampered mechanisation there has been steady progress and today the bulk of the output is won wholly by machines. The 23 producing collieries produce more than 10,000,000 tons of saleable coal a year.

Markets

As with North and South Notts, the Derbyshire Area's main customer is the CEGB, and 40 per cent. of the total output goes to power stations. General industry and space heating locally and in Northern Ireland consume 21 per cent.; the gas industry takes 15 per cent., and the domestic market a further 15 per cent. in the form of coal and smokeless fuels. The remainder goes to coke ovens, exports and as miners' coal.

Welfare

Derbyshire mining men are proud of the fact that there is a miners' welfare scheme of one kind or another at intervals of three miles throughout the coalfield, including 56 registered institutes, 18 cricket grounds and 40 bowling greens. The district operates a welfare affiliation scheme (the only one of its kind) giving Derbyshire miners access to 80 different welfare centres. The offices of the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation are at Hasland, Chesterfield.

April 1967