Out & About: Brinsley Headstocks

This week we didn't travel to far, in fact just across the border into Nottinghamshire. We wanted to have a look around the Brinsley Headstocks which is just a couple of miles outside Eastwood.
We parked in the Brinsley Headstocks Heritage Wildlife Site car park. There were a lot of signs in the car park relating to theft from cars and we were slightly concerned.
It was a short walk up to the old headstocks and very impressive they are. The area of Eastwood is thought to have an association with coal mining for some 700 years up until 1985 when mining in the area ceased with the closure of Moorgreen pit.
The mine in Brinsley stopped production in 1934 when the coal reserves were exhausted, although the mine shafts remained open for another 36 years to provide access to neighbouring pits.
The Brinsley Headstocks were removed from the site in 1970 after 98 years in service and taken to the National Coal Museum at Retford. They were returned and re-erected on the original site in 1991 when the Coal Museum closed. The site then became, along with the old mineral railway line, a picnic and leisure site.This was the colliery where the father of D.H.Lawrence worked, and where scenes from the film Sons and Lovers were shot in the 1960's.

Ike reading the notice board.

There was about 6 of these sings in the car park.

The refurbished headstocks

We had a good rummage around there before setting off across the fields towards Moorgreen Reservoir.

Steps and bridge from the headstocks area.

Ike and Geoff

This was an odd crop which we couldn't quite identify.

The Moorgreen reservoir was built around 1796 as a water feeder source for the Nottingham Canal and is perhaps best known as one of the locations used by local lad D H Lawrence in his writings. It was ‘Willey Water’ in The ‘White Peacock’ and ‘Nethermere’ in ‘Sons and Lovers’. The drowning tragedy in ‘Women in Love’ was also set here and was based on an actual incident at the reservoir in 1892.

The overspill from Moorgreen Reservoir.

Is this the 3 wise men or three 3 brass monkeys?

This structure is in Colliers Wood.

Colliers Wood, created on the site of the former Moorgreen Colliery, is a community wood. The wood has been designed to restore the woodlands and fields which existed before the mine was developed. The woodland and the adjoining industrial land were created through a restoration scheme during 1996-1997. The site was seeded with wild grasses and flowers. Hedgerows and thousands of trees were planted and two ponds created which will become valuable habitats for wildlife. An extensive footpath network has been created using reclaimed shale from the site.

Moorgreen Colliery was established in 1865 and closed in 1985, the last in the area to do so.
Originally it had two thirteen foot diameter shafts 286 yards deep, one to work bright coal (Deep Soft) and one to work hard coal (Deep Hard).
Coal production commenced in 1871 then in 1880 a fire destroyed the headstock and winding rope of the upshaft which temporarily halted production
In 1907 an electric plant was installed at Moorgreen to supply power to all of the Eastwood Collieries.
In 1963 production reached 1,000,000 tons but a gradual reduction in manpower and production continued, until in 1981 the 1,225 men at Moorgreen were only producing 700,000 tonnes of coal from the Blackshale Seam, even at this reduced capacity Moorgreen's output was still roughly equivalent to the total 1890's production from all the Barber and Walker pits put together.
By 1985 the seams were exhausted and the pit closed. It is now an industrial estate and Colliers Wood Country Park.
Geoff has some black & white photos of Moorgreen Pit from 1964