A Short History of Rhodesia and The Shireoaks Colliery

During the year 1854 one of the most significant events in the history of Worksop occurred. On 9th April of that year a simple ceremony saw the Duke of Newcastle cut the first sod on the site of the future colliery. That simple action marked a turning point in the story of Worksop, an erstwhile agricultural market town, whose previous industries had been malting and milling. The colliery provided, in many ways, the catalyst from which the town began slowly but surely to take on the character of a heavy industrial town with an ever-increasing population. The proving of the local coalfield saw coal mining become the principal local industry. By the end of the nineteenth century colliery headstocks dominated the landscape - Steetley and Whitwell pits were working locally and sinking had begun at Manton. Previous industries were dwarfed into virtual insignificance by the development of coal mining.
The colliery was first envisaged by Henry Pelham Clinton of Clumber Park – the Fifth Duke of Newcastle. As early as 1839 he had instigated the sinking of a test borehole, at Lady Lea on the north-western side of his Worksop estate. In charge of operations was a Mr John Woodhouse, a mining engineer of Moira Collieries, Leicestershire. Although coal was found, the project was abandoned due to difficulties from water. Not to be deterred, the Duke instigated a further, more sustained and eventually successful effort. A site about a mile distant from the original borehole was chosen. Again, this was on land owned by the Duke, close to the small collection of cottages that made up the village of Shireoaks. The area had derived its name from a huge oak tree that was said to have stood on the point where the three counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire converged

The sinking of two shafts commenced at a position two and a half miles west of Worksop. The location was close to an established iron foundry, midway between the Chesterfield Canal and the Sheffield to Lincoln railway line. Though coal production would not start for another five years, this spot provided the colliery with excellent transport links for the sale of its coal.
The early development of the colliery has rightly been described as a pioneering enterprise. It was certainly a step into the unknown, being by far the deepest colliery in the region at the time. Prior to this no colliery had ever been sunk into the eastern concealed coalfield – so called as the coal measures dipping to the east are overlain by a considerable thickness of permian rocks including magnesian limestone. The coal seams lay much deeper than in the old exposed coalfield and had not been extracted due to a combination of technical and financial barriers. In particular, these problems were deep shaft sinking, water, ventilation restrictions and perhaps most significantly, the huge amount of capital that would need to be risked with little hope of revenue for several years. Nonetheless, the determination of management and men at the colliery proved the coalfield - leading the way for many later collieries.
This set a pattern for Shireoaks colliery - it was not to be the last time that the pit was to be at the forefront of developments, becoming known throughout the Yorkshire coalfield for its series of “firsts”