Cotgrave Colliery

Cotgrave Colliery

The town lies on the Grantham Canal, opened in 1797. Some exploration for coal had been attempted for a hundred years but none was discovered in the area until about 1950. Cotgrave Colliery was established in the early 1960s with large numbers of miners and their families being moved from other mining areas of England, especially the North East, to live on a large purpose-built housing estate. Initially, in 1962, around 500 experienced mining workers and their families, accepted the National Coal Board incentive of tied new houses complete with furnishings to move from the area of the recently closed Radford Mine on the north-west side of nearby Nottingham. This mine was near the site of what is now known as Bobber's Mill. Some four years later a similar scheme was introduced to attract miners from other worked-out mines in the North East of England, including Gateshead. According to residents, special meetings were arranged so that workers already established could understand, for safety reasons, the dialect, and vice versa, of the newcomers. The population of the village rose from about 700 to over 5,000 within a few years. In 1960, a 2.75 mi (4.43 km) branch railway was extended from the Nottingham–Grantham line across the River Trent past Radcliffe on Trent to the colliery. The line closed when the pit closed in 1993. The koepe towers at the pit head were considered very modern and distinctive compared with other pit-head winding-gear towers. In a departure from traditional miners' working conditions, face workers had extensive modern changing and shower facilities, which meant they could leave as clean as they entered.