National story - RECLAMATION

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 20th Year

Issue

Issue No.

12

Date Released

Aug 1967

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1County Durham - DOREEN HENDERSON
2. 2Lancashire - CASUALTY UNION
3. 3National story - RECLAMATION

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: 100,000 acres of land in Britain is derelict. The Coal Board plays its part in reclaiming land for new productive uses.
NCB Commentary - Temple Normanton in South Derbyshire is a mining village.
In the terraced houses, Mrs. Turner goes over pictures of the village as it once was with Bill Bown.
Once Bonds Main Colliery was at the end of the road, but it closed after 1945.
Bonds Main has gone, along with its two towering pit tips, and now the bulldozers and the scrapers are in.
Although the coal seams were worked out, they’re still getting out the coal which was left near the surface.
In a few months the 60-acre site will be levelled and restored from end to end.
This is just one segment out of more than 100,000 acres of derelict land in Britain - and coal is one industry doing something about it.
This is where Parkhouse Colliery stood - 10 miles south of Chesterfield. Its buildings were pulled down, but an unsightly pit tip was left standing.
Today the Coal Board’s contractors with their heavy earth-moving equipment are at work.
There’s still a bit of coal left for the men to brew up on.
When the million tons of spoil are removed and the surrounding area re-contoured, new land will be handed back to the nation.
And saleable coal lying just below the surface of the ground is being taken out, before the job of levelling is completed.
It will go to the washery, to be cleaned and graded for the market.
Most of the Colliery spoil can be put to good use - and it is. Road-making is a big customer. This asphalt is being laid over a base of pit shale. That’s where the foundations of this athletics track came from. And Newcastle’s new airport stands on the same solid footing.
Out of the old, rises the new. Out of derelict sites in many corners of Britain the last coal is still being mined. The ground is being cleared, and returned to another productive purpose.
200 years of industrial neglect are going to cost £40 million over the next ten years to reclaim. Britain’s mining industry is helping to pay for it. As well as winning the coal the nation needs, mining is in the forefront of the job of turning back dereliction and putting the land to constructive and productive use.

Keywords

Environment; Mining

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit