The Bolsover Colliery Company was a major mining concern established to extract coal from land owned by the
Duke of Portland
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are rank ...
. At its peak the business was a constituent of the FT 30 index of leading companies on the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
.
History
The company was founded in 1889 by
Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge
Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge (5 December 1845 – 12 May 1911) was an English mining consulting engineer, philanthropist and Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1895 to 1900.
Life
Bainbridge was born in the village of ...
, a
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land on ...
born mine owner, who secured a lease from the
Duke of Portland
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are rank ...
for land at
Bolsover
Bolsover is a market town and the administrative centre of the Bolsover (borough), Bolsover District, Derbyshire, England. It is from London, from Sheffield, from Nottingham and from Derby, Derbyshire, Derby. It is the main town in the Bols ...
in
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
and started shaft sinking to reach the coal in 1891. The general manager of the company at this time was
John Plowright Houfton, who was knighted for his work for the local community in 1929.
Bainbridge secured the rights to mine coal at
Creswell in 1894 and shaft sinking for Creswell Colliery began under the direction of J. P. Houfton in September that year. Coal was reached at 450 yards and production began in 1897. The colliery had two shafts and access to between three and four square miles of coal reserves. By 1901 the colliery was producing 2700 to 3000 tons of coal daily and in the July, 3001 tons was delivered to the surface in one day, a world record for coal production at the time. A
model village
A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. Although the villages are located close to the workplace, they are generally phys ...
was built to accommodate some of the workforce.
In 1899 Bainbridge secured a further lease from the Duke of Portland for land at Crown Farm near
Mansfield
Mansfield is a market town and the administrative centre of Mansfield District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the wider Mansfield Urban Area (followed by Sutton-in-Ashfield). It gained the Royal Charter of a market tow ...
in
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
: coal was reached in 1905.
Subsequent leases were secured from
Earl Manvers
Earl Manvers was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1806 for Charles Medows Pierrepont, 1st Viscount Newark. He had already been created Baron Pierrepont, of Holme Pierrepont in the County of Nottingham, and Viscoun ...
and
Lord Savile allowing collieries to be established at
Rufford,
Clipstone
Clipstone in north Nottinghamshire is a small ex-coal mining village built on the site of an old army base and close to the site of a medieval royal palace. The population of the civil parish was 3,469 at the 2001 census, increasing to 4,665 a ...
and Thoresby in
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
where coal was reached 1913, 1922 and 1928 respectively.
In 1933 the company's Bolsover, Clipstone, Creswell, Mansfield, Rufford and Thorsby Collieries employed 9,369 men extracting 4.5 million tons of coal from the Top Hard, Waterloo and High Hazel seams.
Demise of the business
The company's collieries were acquired by the
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "v ...
on nationalisation in 1947. Bolsover Colliery closed in 1993 and Creswell Colliery closed in 1991.
References
External links
Victoria County History, Bolsover Colliery
{{Authority control
Non-renewable resource companies established in 1889
Coal companies of England
1889 establishments in England
Mining in Derbyshire
Companies based in Derbyshire
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
Non-renewable resource companies disestablished in 1947
Bolsover
Energy companies established in 1889