Mining the Seams Exhibition

It’s been a long time since there was an exhibition in our vitrine wall which separates reception and the search room. Now though we have the exhibition space full of archival material again for our first exhibition on display in nearly three years. The exhibition showcases just some of the many items from the National …

Henry Eustace Mitton

The Butterley Company of Ripley, founded in 1790, built a name for themselves as engineers (the roof of St Pancras Station being one of their finest achievements), but also had a profitable business selling coal and iron. The success of their coal operations in the first half of the 20th Century owes much to Henry …

Mining the Seams workshop recordings

On 13 October we held a workshop aimed particularly at students and academics to talk about the archives of the coal industry in Derbyshire and Warwickshire, catalogued with Wellcome Trust funding. As not everyone who wanted to attend was able to come, we are sharing recordings of the presentations. https://videopress.com/v/oe0ki84h?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata Warwickshire County Record Office - …

The Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Severn, the Undermanager at Mapperley Colliery

Thomas Severn was an experienced miner, working as a deputy at both Clifton and Stanley Collieries before moving to work as an Undermanager at Mapperley Colliery. He had been born in April 1875 on land owned by Swanwick Colliery as his father, Thomas Senior, had been a manager there. Thomas Junior had mining in the …

Mining the Seams Update: Part of the National Coal Board Catalogue Goes Live

Throughout the Mining the Seams Project, our main target has been to catalogue the coal mining documents we received from the National Coal Board (NCB), to ensure the public will be able to view them. When the project started in October 2019, it seemed like the target of the first half of the collection going …

Bevin Boys in the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire Coal Field

During the Second World War, the coal industry faced an employment crisis in spite of coal being an in-demand fuel at the time. Despite mining being a reserved occupation, which exempted those working in it from military service, this only applied to men aged 30 or over. Many men took advantage of this and went …