Rothes Colliery - New Sinking

[rhonddalad]

Rothes Colliery, Thornton, Fifeshire was one of the N.C.B's first major new sinkings after Nationalisation. It was, I believe opened in the late 1950's and in 1959/60 employed in the region of 1,270 men. However, I understand it closed in the early 1960's. I believe the shafts were still in situ in the early 1980's.

Can anyone enlarge on why the Colliery was closed so soon after development. Was it due to difficult geology?

[John]

The seams in that coalfield are pretty steep and work the horizon method. Some faces were probably 1in1.5! There is information on Rothes on this site if you do a search.

[John]

Here's some good info on Rothes.

www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mmartin/fifepits/starter/east/pits/r/pit-4.htm

[rhonddalad]

John,

Thank you for that information on Rothes Colliery. Absolutely fascinating. I had heard about Rothes Colliery many years ago but never knew until now why it was closed so soon after development.

[John]

Quite a few pits were closed long before their time. Cotgrave must have had years left in it. It was sunk in the late 50's and started production on the deep soft seam in the early 60's. They hit soft floors and had to have continuous dinters working around the clock to keep roads open.
They abandoned the deep soft seam for the next one down, deep hard. Good coal but still floor problems that I recall from the late 60's. I don't know if they overcame the floor lift problems, but they sure took a lot of hard coal out.
Looking at the abandonment plans, they next went down to the Parkgate seam, developed roads but no faces were developed.
There are two workable seams between deep hard and the Parkgate seam, Piper and Tupton. (Low Main) Tupton is low grade coal, Piper very high grade, almost like anthracite.
The pit probably had another 50 or more years of workable reserves when it was closed.

I'm sure Selby also was left with workable reserves to the east.

[rhonddalad]

John, I am sure you are right about Selby.

But, we have a more recent example of a costly new sinking (with huge reserves) being closed after only a few years working - Ashfordby Colliery - part of the North East Leicestershire Prospect.

In July 1982 The National Coal Board produced a paper entitled, "Ashfordby Stage 1 Plus".

This paper states - 'The mine is planned to work three target seams, which lie between 400m and 700m below the surface, deepening towards the North East. The RECOVERABLE reserves in the target seams are shown below:

Seam Million Tonnes

Deep Main 54.8
Parkgate 63.8
Blackshale 27.5

TOTAL 146.1

The principal seams are the Deep Main and Parkgate which are continuous throughout the Application Area. They are 20m to 35m apart and vary in sickness between 160cm and 300cm, with about 5cm to 10cm of in-seam dirt.'

The Plan also states 'The scheme will provide the opportunity for continuation of employment for some of the existing workforce; predominantly from the North West Leicesterhire Coalfield of the South Midlands Area and, to a lesser extent, from the South Nottinghamshire Area.

The estimated manpower required for Ashfordby at full production (Year 8) will be 1100. An average daily saleable output of 9,442 tonnes is necessary to achieve the planned output of 2.2 million tonnes of saleable per year. An overall productivity of 10.9 tonnes per manshift is forecast'.

Ah "The best laid plans of mice and men".

[John]

Just a correction to my post, I found out the Parkgate was another name for the Piper seam, in order Deep Soft, Deep Hard, Piper (Parkgate, which in some areas was No1 and No2, but south of the Trent is just one seam.), Tupton or Low Main, Ashgate, Blackshale, then some seams not taken, leading to the end of the lower coal measures and sandstone.

Problems with the Piper, (Parkgate) was it's weak roof, needed heavier roof supports in mechanised mining. Clifton worked it for years with handgot methods without problems, then with Meco-Moore Slicer Loaders, props and bars. But with shearers and trepanners, it wasn't successful. Maybe with 450 tonne chock shields, there would have been no problems. We will never know now.