AREA PROFILE: EAST MIDLANDS NO. 3 EDWINSTOWE

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 10th Year

Issue

Issue No.

1

Date Released

Sep 1956

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1RUSSIAN VISIT NO. 2
2. 2AVENUE
3. 3AREA PROFILE: EAST MIDLANDS NO. 3 EDWINSTOWE

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Section Title

AREA PROFILE

Summary

BFI synopsis: Profile of the Edwinstowe Area of the East Midlands, the most productive coalfield in the country.
NCB Commentary - The Edwinstowe Area of the East Midlands has its centre in the Dukeries where great estates and ancestral homes have continued to flourish since the days when Robin Hood was the unofficial King of Sherwood Forest.
The 12 pits of No. 3 - the Edwinstowe - area make it the most productive coalfield in the country. Its achievements read like a text book of mechanisation. Mechanisation speeds men to their work on the coal, and on the faces Anderton Disc Shearers, Trepanners and Meco-Moores already account for 46% of the areas 9 million tons annual output.
At Thoresby colliery alone 75% of the coal is cut and loaded by machine - a staggering figure, the highest in the nation.
Mechanisation on the surface keeps pace with what has been down underground. New Koepe Winders, modernised pit-head layouts, and electrification combine to make it possible for coal to come up the shafts more quickly than ever before.
Once on the surface output is being handled with even greater efficiency and speed. At Welbeck these giant minercars held 7 tons a-piece.
Miners in No. 3 work hard and live well. Their modern colliery canteens reflect the up-to-date techniques of coal winning.
Sherwood colliery has its own swimming pool, and Physiotherapy Clinics in the area set a high standard in equipment and services enjoyed by mineworkers and their families.
Looking after the men is a basic tenet of the area’s philosophy.
High output in No. 3 area means big eage packets and the enhanced standard of living which they imply. The belief of both labour and management in No. 3 is that in the end it’s the men who get the coal.
Mine workers’ houses may lie in the shadow of the headstock but there is nothing grim about them. Modern craftsmen underground, the miners of No. 3 believe in making use of modern equipment in their homes. Electrification, refrigeration and television are commonplace in the area’s way of life.
But No. 3 area is not standing still. Massive as its achievements are, plans are in progress for the future - plans which envisage raising the area’s output to 12 million tons a year by 1965. How is this to be done? There are three answers. First reorganisation and modernisation are re-shaping the faces of existing collieries. At Rufford a gigantic rebuilding as taken place which will turn the existing colliery into the Nation’s first 2-million ton a year coal producing unit
Already Rufford is stretching out for the 1300 men it will need to augment its labour force.
Initial training underground for new entrants to the industry taken place nearby at Mansfield. Experienced miners will be released from other pits as a result of more efficient methods of coal winning.
Over at Bevercotes is the second prong of the attack - a brand new colliery reaching down into new coal measures. Here shaft sinking and the creation of new districts underground already absorb a skeleton labour force, but at Bevercotes soon over 1800 men will be needed.
Where are they to come from? The nearest source of labour is East Retford, a tidy marketing and light industrial town on the Great North Road. Gainsborough too will come within Bevercotes orbit. The urgent problem is: can Retford and it’s surroundings supply the men who will be needed?
Today the Labour Exchanges can offer a trickle. What Bevercotes will need in a few years time is a full tide flood.
Third and most forward looking aspect of the plan for the future in Area No. 3 is the proving of entirely new coal measures over towards the lush Lincolnshire farmlands.
At Ranby here are the first quickenings of collieries about to be born, but to staff embryo pits in the district 10 years from now a start has to be made today in finding the men and in arranging for their training.
Lound Hall, a mansion converted into a training college, will play an increasingly important role during the next decade. Here, by the joint enterprise of coal board and local education authorities, has been set up a training establishment to educate teen age entrants in the traditions of the mining industry.
What used to be stable quarters are today the centre of colliery training extending out into the paddock where training galleries are being set up by boy apprentices for themselves and for the future.
The existence of a mine-training face in the precincts of what used to be a Manor house typifies more than anything else the intermingled traditions of the coal industry and the dukeries in No. 3.
For the yong men who come forward to be trained as the elite of the new mining corps, the assurance is there that not only their own lives but those of their sons and grandsons can be planned in the winning of virgin coal from the area’s rich seams.
In this most productive of British coalfields the future beckons bright.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded 7th August 1956.

Keywords

Domestic life; Science and technology; Swimming; Mining; Town and country planning

Locations

England; Nottinghamshire

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
Film User   Vol.11 No.123 January 1957, p30.
The National Archives COAL 32   /12 Scripts for Mining Review, 1956-1960

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Sponsor

National Coal Board