Welbeck is a village 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 ...

, England, slightly to the south-west of

Worksop Worksop ( ) is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is located east-south-east of Sheffield, close to Nottinghamshire's borders with South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, on the River Ryton and not far from the nor ...

. The village population is included in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Holbeck Holbeck is an inner city area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It begins on the southern edge of Leeds city centre and mainly lies in the LS11 postcode district. The M1 and M621 motorways used to end/begin in Holbeck. Now the M621 is the o ...

. Welbeck became a

coal-mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

centre in 1912 and has a famous stately home,

Welbeck Abbey Welbeck Abbey in the Dukeries in North Nottinghamshire was the site of a monastery belonging to the Premonstratensian order in England and after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a country house residence of the Dukes of Portland. It is one ...

, home of the

Dukes of Portland Earl of Portland is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of England, firstly in 1633 and secondly in 1689. What proved to be a long co-held title, Duke of Portland, was created in 1716 and became extinct in 1990 upon the death of t ...

, and which was founded in the twelfth century as a monastery. The

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

Ted Alletson Edwin Boaler Alletson, (6 March 1884 – 5 July 1963), played English county cricket for Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club during the early years of the 20th century. He was predominantly selected by Nottinghamshire as a right-handed batsman an ...

, who held a batting world record for 50 years, is from Welbeck.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria, (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His assassination in Sarajevo was the most immediate cause of World War I. Fr ...

accepted an invitation 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 ...

to stay at Welbeck Abbey and arrived with his wife, Sophie, by train at

on 22 November 1913. This was almost a year before his assassination, which triggered the First World War. The Archduke narrowly avoided being killed in a freak hunting accident during his stay.BBC News 25 November 2013: "Could Franz Ferdinand Welbeck gun accident have halted WWI?" Accessed 25 November 2013
/ref>

Colliery

The Welbeck Colliery operated from 1912 to 2011, with a maximum of 1,400 miners producing 1.5 million tons per year. It was eventually operated by

UK Coal UK Coal Production Ltd, formerly UK Coal plc, was the largest coal mining business in the United Kingdom. The company was based in Harworth, in Nottinghamshire. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The successor company that con ...

after the dissolution of 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 ...

. In 2010 UK Coal were fined £1.2 million of safety breaches at Welbeck Colliery that resulted in the death of a worker.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Nottinghamshire Coal mining disasters in England Bassetlaw District