Qualla: Pleasley Colliery

Pleasley Colliery: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most of the coalfield's pits were knocked down so completely you could walk over their footprints without noticing. Pleasley is the exception. Drive north out of Mansfield on the road that climbs out of the River Meden valley and the twin headstocks rise above the trees, still standing where they have stood since the 1870s. The winding wheels at the top no longer turn for coal. They turn when volunteers, on certain weekends, fire up the original steam winders below them and let everything move the way it did for a hundred and ten years.

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Image: Nessy-Pic | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pleasley Colliery: Why Pleasley Was Sunk

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Betty Longbottom, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Stanton Iron Company needed fuel. In 1870, its blast furnaces in Derbyshire were hungry enough that the company started looking north for new coal. Boreholes around the village of Pleasley, on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, found a good seam, and sinking began in 1873...

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Image: Betty Longbottom | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pleasley Colliery: Two Steam Winders

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. What makes Pleasley unusual is what is left inside. The engine-house contains two working steam winding engines: one installed in 1905 by the Lilleshall Company, the other in 1922 by Markham and Co. The winders are the machines that did the actual work of lifting men, coal and eq...

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Image: Chris Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pleasley Colliery: Listed, Scheduled, Restored

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Heardman, CC BY-SA 2.0. The engine-house complex is a Grade II listed building, and the broader site is a Scheduled Monument under the protection given to nationally important archaeological remains. Both designations followed the work of the Friends. The chimney, forty metres of late-Victorian brickwor...

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Image: Alan Heardman | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pleasley Colliery: Footpaths and Cycle Trails

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Two adjacent railway lines once carried coal away from Pleasley, part of a dense network that linked the collieries to the iron towns and to ports on the east coast. The lines closed with the pit, and the alignments have been converted into cycle trails. From Pleasley you can rid...

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Image: Andrewrabbott at English Wikipedia | Public domain