Swanwick Common Colliery Headstock and Winding House

Summary

The steel headstock and brick winding house of a small, early-C20 colliery.

Reasons for Designation

Swanwick Common Colliery headstock and winding house, structures from a small early-C20 colliery, are listed for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* the headstock is of rudimentary construction using pre-fabricated steel elements, illustrating both the small-scale nature of the works and the low capital outlay it required;

* the winding house is simple and functional in design, and its position in relation to the headgear allow its function to be readily understood.

Historic interest:

* any survival of colliery structures is rare, but the vulnerability of small-scale operations such as this to removal means it is particularly rare;

* together the headstock and winding house illustrate the nature of a type of a class of coal mine which was once common, but is now little known or understood.

History

Swanwick Common Colliery is located around 50m south-west of the roundabout junction of the B6179 Derby Road with the Old Swanwick Colliery Road. The colliery does not appear on Ordnance Survey mapping published in 1900, but it is shown on the 1916 edition, giving it an early-C20 date.

Coal has been mined in the Swanwick area since at least the C13, with the industry intensifying after the Morewood family, Lords of the Manor of Alfreton acquired the crown rights to mine there in 1789. From the mid-C19 the Morewoods developed two large collieries on Alfreton Common: Swanwick Old Colliery, some 400m north-east of Swanwick Common Colliery, and Swanwick Deep Colliery, a further 400m east. A government inspector’s report from 1896 details that both these collieries were under the same manager, each employing hundreds of workers, with over 1000 in work at the Deep Pit by 1923. Although close to these large workings, it is likely that the Swanwick Common shaft was a small private garden shaft rather than an offshoot of the large collieries. Despite there being no known official connection, the excavations beneath Swanwick Common Colliery are thought to have horizontal passages connecting with those from the other nearby collieries, increasing the numbers of shafts available to return above ground.

A plan of the site made at some point after 1921 shows the colliery at the time of operation. The structures comprised of the shaft, winding house and an office. The headstock was the machinery for raising and lowering people and equipment in a lift to and from the surface of the mine; the winding house was the building where the machine which wound the cables for the lift was housed. South of the shaft this plan also shows a wharf and canal running alongside the brook which used to flow above ground south to Swanwick. The plan notes that the shaft has a diameter of 10 feet and that the topmost coal seam is at a depth of between 16 yards (14.6m) and 36 yards (32.9m) below surface, with three further coal seams extending to a depth of 86 yards (78.6m). The Coal Authority record the depth of the shaft to have been 81.9m.

At time of inspection in 2023 the winding house retained remnants of electrical switchgear to power the winding mechanism. It is not clear if the original mechanism, which dated to before 1916, was steam powered. The building had undergone alterations blocking some openings and altering the size of the doors (perhaps due to a change in machinery from steam to electric), but no trace of a chimney was visible. The headstock is small in scale and constructed from steel ‘I’ profile beams bolted together; it may be a replacement of the original, and its low height above ground level indicates that it may have been truncated.

The 1:2500 scale Ordnance Survey map of 1961 labels the site ‘shaft disused’, indicating that extraction had ceased here by the mid-C20. The site of the colliery office is now occupied by a private house and the winding house and headstock are in its grounds.

Details

The steel headstock and brick winding house of a small, early-C20 colliery.

PLAN: both winding house and headstock are rectangular and orientated roughly north / south, with the winding house around 10m north of the headstock.

MATERIALS: the winding house is brick with slate roof tiles, the headstock is constructed from steel ‘I’ profile beams.

WINDING HOUSE

EXTERIOR: the winding house has a pitched, slate covered roof with gable ends to north and south. Walls are red brick in English bond to lower courses and in the gables, the rest is in English garden wall or irregular bond.

The south elevation faces the headstock, and has a single steel door and steel lintel inserted into a formerly wider and higher opening with a stone lintel, now partially brick infilled. Floor level is about 1m above ground level, and there is a largely ruinous brick block of steps up to the door. Located centrally above the older, higher lintel is an infilled rectangular opening with brick lintel, likely the route through which cables to the headstock passed from the winding machine.

The side elevations are plain brick decorated with a recessed panel around a third of the way up the height of the walls. The bottoms of the panels are marked out in blue plinth bricks. As for the south elevation, there is a steel door about 1m above ground level, though here the lintel is concrete and the steps up are gone.

INTERIOR: one room open to the rafters. The walls and floor are exposed brick, with a thin screed of concrete over part of the floor. The floor has a lip down from its south end. Electrical switchgear is mounted to the east wall, and there is a blocked opening under a stone lintel in the west wall.

HEADSTOCK

EXTERIOR: this is a simple structure comprised of two rectangular frames made from ‘I’ profile steel beams bolted together and braced with diagonal steel struts. The frames carry two pairs of parallel rails (again formed from steel beams), each which carries a steel wheel. The frames are buttressed by further steel beams to the north.

Sources

Books and journals
An Ancient Swanwick Coal Mine in Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, ,Vol. 73, (1953), 114-120

Other
Derbyshire Historic Environment Record MDR9594: Swanwick Colliery and branch line (site of), Thornton Park, Alfreton

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