Creswell Colliery Remembered.

Subscribe to my you tube channel for 280+ more coal mine tributes and counting. Creswell expanded throughout the 20th century after a lease was obtained from the Duke of Portland in 1894 for the top hard seam of coal in the area and Creswell Colliery came into being. The Bolsover Colliery Company owned the pit until it was nationalised in 1947. Creswell Colliery was regarded as one of the most efficient pits in the East Midlands coalfield. The colliery was known for its sporting and social activities and Creswell Colliery Band was for a long time one of the country’s leading brass bands and had been broadcast several times on BBC Radio.
Creswell Model Village was built in 1895 to house the coal mining families. Expansion of housing continued throughout the 20th century. Creswell is in Derbyshire but close to the borders of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Creswell has a Worksop postal address with a South Yorkshire postcode. Derbyshire can be used in the postal address. Creswell Colliery was in the North Nottinghamshire coalfield but miners holidayed at the Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Camp. Creswell Colliery mining disaster, 1950
On Thursday the 26th September 1950 during the early hours of the morning a damaged conveyor belt caught in a machine at the colliery and caused the motor to overheat and catch fire trapping 80 men beyond the flames. They all perished as a result of the fumes and smoke. As word of the disaster spread, Creswell residents rushed to the pithead to offer assistance. One miner, who had broken his back several months before, went down the stricken pit, with a back brace on, to rescue his fellow workers.
Serious errors prevented the fire from being extinguished quickly and only 57 bodies were initially recovered and 23 remained underground for the best part of a year. The fire was finally put out after the entire colliery had been sealed to starve it of oxygen and it did not reopen until Easter 1951 when most of the remaining bodies were recovered. The last three victims were recovered on 11 August 1951 nearly eleven months after the fire.
The enquiry presided over by the Minister of Fuel and Power Geoffrey Lloyd, described a number of factors involved in the high death rate, including telephones being too far from the face, repair work being done on the "paddy" (the underground train used to convey the men to and from the lift shaft), inadequate air shafts and low water pressure in the fire hoses. Creswell Colliery sadly closed in 1991.