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Post by John on May 23, 2017 8:10:37 GMT -5
Took me a long time to compile this list, maybe I've missed a few. There are hundreds of unnamed thins seams. I'll add to or alter any that I find are wrong.
High Main. Wales Group........Not sure if any pit worked any of these, I presume they were uneconomic, and probably used as a "marker" for the Clowne seam.. Clowne. Main Bright. Two Foot. Low Bright. Abdy, possible this also went under the name of Brinsley. High Hazles. Cinderhill Main. Comb, Coombe and possible it was the Main Smut. Top Hard, also known as the Barnsley Bed. Blidworth. Dunsil. 1st Waterloo. 2nd Waterloo. 3rd Waterloo. 4th Waterloo. 1st Ell. 2nd Ell. Brown Rake.( This may also be known as the Joan seam)
End of the Middle Measure. Start of the Lower Measures. Top soft. Roof Soft...Used as a "marker" Deep Soft. Deep Hard. 1st Piper. 2nd Piper...When these two seams merged, the seam was known as the Parkgate. Tupton. Also known as Low Main. 3/4. Yard. Blackshale. Ashgate. Mickley. Kilburn. Wingfield Flags. Horton or Norton. Alton. Base of the Lower Coal Measures and the Millstone Grit.
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Post by bulwellbrian on May 24, 2017 3:04:05 GMT -5
The one you have missed is the High Main.
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Post by John on May 24, 2017 5:27:47 GMT -5
The one you have missed is the High Main. Deliberate mistake to see if anyone was paying attention Brian....LOL
Thanks so I have, now which side of the Wales does it belong, above or below....??
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Post by colly0410 on May 25, 2017 5:07:17 GMT -5
I was going to say "missed Low Main" then I remembered that the Tupton is also the Low Main. I never noticed you'd missed the High Main, lol. IIRC the High Main is above the Main Bright, but is it above or below the Clowne or Wales group? They probably told us at tech college geology class but it's floated off out of my brain..
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Post by John on May 25, 2017 5:25:00 GMT -5
I was going to say "missed Low Main" then I remembered that the Tupton is also the Low Main. I never noticed you'd missed the High Main, lol. IIRC the High Main is above the Main Bright, but is it above or below the Clowne or Wales group? They probably told us at tech college geology class but it's floated off out of my brain.. High Main is the first workable seam Steve, the Wales is a series of thin seams used as a "marker" by drillers. and shaft sinkers.
I'll be working on the Yorkshire seams soon, there are a couple like the Abdy, Top Hard and Parkside which are the same. So will try to add the Notts coalfield names at side of them.
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Post by colly0410 on May 25, 2017 9:45:02 GMT -5
I should have noticed High Main wasn't there as my friend lives on High Main Drive in Bestwood, it's on a new housing development where the NCB garages used to be. Remember walking up a cross measure drift in Hucknalls Main Bright seam to another seam, presume it was High Main..
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Post by John on May 25, 2017 11:10:47 GMT -5
I found two more seams while checking a borehole log drilled a couple of hundred yards south of Bestwood's shafts to prove the blackshale for Hucknall Colliery. The Two Foot, between MB and LB. and the other is the Blidworth, between TH and Dunsil.
All seams I find will be added to the seam list in red.
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Post by bulwellbrian on May 26, 2017 6:38:51 GMT -5
Coal seams ore not very consistant over distance, they split and combine and correlation was not always easy. My memory is that the Abdy and Brinsley were two separate thin seams the Abdy being the same seam as Low Bright. The Abdy and Brinsley came togeather in the North East of South Notts to produce a workable seam which was worked at Calverton and also I believe at Blidworth, it was known as the Abdy/Brinsley seam.
Some collieries gave seams other names eg Gedling called the High Hazles the Low Hazel, Wollaton called the Tupton the Low Main and the Piper the New Main. Its a complicated subject of little but accademic interest nowdays, unfortunatly.
When I worked at the lab the seams I remember being worked were;-
Babbington, Deep Soft, Deep Hard, Tupton, Blackshale Bestwood, High Main, Main Bright (unsuccessfully), High Hazles (unsuccessfully its quality was poor) Calverton, High Main, Abdy/Brinsley Clifton, Deep Hard, Piper, Tupton Cotgrave, Deep Soft, Deep Hard, Blackshale Gedling, High Hazles, Top Hard, Main Bright (unsuccessfully) Hucknall, High Main, Main Bright, Deep Soft, Blackshale Linby, High Main Radford, Tupton Wollaton, Deep Hard, Piper, Tupton.
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Post by John on May 26, 2017 8:17:57 GMT -5
Coal seams ore not very consistant over distance, they split and combine and correlation was not always easy. My memory is that the Abdy and Brinsley were two separate thin seams the Abdy being the same seam as Low Bright. The Abdy and Brinsley came togeather in the North East of South Notts to produce a workable seam which was worked at Calverton and also I believe at Blidworth, it was known as the Abdy/Brinsley seam. Some collieries gave seams other names eg Gedling called the High Hazles the Low Hazel, Wollaton called the Tupton the Low Main and the Piper the New Main. Its a complicated subject of little but accademic interest nowdays, unfortunatly. When I worked at the lab the seams I remember being worked were;- Babbington, Deep Soft, Deep Hard, Tupton, Blackshale Bestwood, High Main, Main Bright (unsuccessfully), High Hazles (unsuccessfully its quality was poor) Calverton, High Main, Abdy/Brinsley Clifton, Deep Hard, Piper, Tupton Cotgrave, Deep Soft, Deep Hard, Blackshale Gedling, High Hazles, Top Hard, Main Bright (unsuccessfully) Hucknall, High Main, Main Bright, Deep Soft, Blackshale Linby, High Main Radford, Tupton Wollaton, Deep Hard, Piper, Tupton. I got the seam names from deep borings Brian plus shaft sinking records. Older borehole records tended to have local names for seams, but modern borings close by were used to extract the names. It's took me a long time because of the problems of local seam names. I might mention the "Wingfield Flags" is not coal but a sandstone layer, again used as a "marker".
There's a boring a couple of hundred yards south of Bestwood shafts that's interesting. What annoys me about boreholes, more so NCB holes, is so many confidential listings, and yet the NCB is no longer listed. It would make things easier for those researching to have those listed as normal. Gedling shafts are listed as confidential and yet they were sunk under private enterprise.
Don't forget Cotgrave went down to the 1st/2nd Piper combined seams, Parkgate, although unsuccessfully.
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Post by colly0410 on Aug 5, 2018 9:51:13 GMT -5
I remember seeing a map in an office at Hucknall pit & the Black Shale drifts were called the "Tupton/Low Main" drifts. There was a roadway linking the 2 drifts with air doors at the Tupton/Low Main level, it was quite a long roadway as the intake drift was 1 in 5 & return drift 1 in 6. I'm speculating that they were going for the Tupton/Low Main seam then changed their minds & carried on down to Black Shale. I remember reading that Tupton/Low Main was low quality coal & i'm presuming Black Shale was higher quality...
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Post by ginger on Aug 26, 2018 3:02:51 GMT -5
Hi Does anyone know the thickness of the Kilburn Coal seam below South Normanton? Does anyone know a retired borehole driller who would be willing to teach us core drilling?
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Post by John on Aug 26, 2018 6:28:08 GMT -5
Around 900ft, most of the bores in that area are marked confidential, so unable to get data, I tried a few of the NCB Pinxton colliery drillings, but they don't go any further than the Blackshale seam. As the Kilburn was a thins seam and one of the bottom seams the NCB rarely spent money drilling to that depth. Most data comes from oil exploration drillings and old coal company drillings.
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Post by John on Aug 26, 2018 6:35:30 GMT -5
Just found one to the west of South Normanton at Normanton Brook, was drilled in 1955, Kilburn was found at 1309ft 11" and was 2ft 4" thick.
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Post by ginger on Aug 26, 2018 16:00:27 GMT -5
Thanks
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Post by crankpin on Dec 19, 2020 18:50:41 GMT -5
Around 900ft, most of the bores in that area are marked confidential, so unable to get data, I tried a few of the NCB Pinxton colliery drillings, but they don't go any further than the Blackshale seam. As the Kilburn was a thins seam and one of the bottom seams the NCB rarely spent money drilling to that depth. Most data comes from oil exploration drillings and old coal company drillings. John perhaps of no interest now given this post is over 2 years old, but I have a copy of a chart of all seams and their correlation across the coalfields of South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, North Derbyshire Leicestershire, South Derbyshire and Warwickshire dated 1965.
If it is of any use I can try and copy and send it on, I doubt if they would reproduce over the electrikity world wide waves. Incidently the plots show the deepest seams were Norton then Alton and the last being Belper Lawn at about 500ft deeper than the Kilburn - a seam I know only to well!
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Post by John on Dec 20, 2020 6:48:54 GMT -5
Around 900ft, most of the bores in that area are marked confidential, so unable to get data, I tried a few of the NCB Pinxton colliery drillings, but they don't go any further than the Blackshale seam. As the Kilburn was a thins seam and one of the bottom seams the NCB rarely spent money drilling to that depth. Most data comes from oil exploration drillings and old coal company drillings. John perhaps of no interest now given this post is over 2 years old, but I have a copy of a chart of all seams and their correlation across the coalfields of South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, North Derbyshire Leicestershire, South Derbyshire and Warwickshire dated 1965.
If it is of any use I can try and copy and send it on, I doubt if they would reproduce over the electrikity world wide waves. Incidently the plots show the deepest seams were Norton then Alton and the last being Belper Lawn at about 500ft deeper than the Kilburn - a seam I know only to well! If you can scan them and let me know via a pm here, I'll send you my email address to email them to me, I'll stick them here. The idea of the site was to make information and history available to everyone.
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Post by maverick on Dec 22, 2020 21:45:49 GMT -5
It gets confusing as the same seam was given different names across many collieries and also across areas, many faults such as the Shipley Syncline also confused this as in the syncline the coal seams and ground fractured dropped by around 140 feet and while the seams remained, they often matched up with seams lower than them and this faultline ran through Langley Mill along the Erewash Valley and back into the Nottinghamshire coalfield.
Things got more confusing as there was High Hazel and Low Hazel seams and at places they intersected and became one seam called Hazles (not Hazels) and there was another Hazles seam below the Blackshale seam which was often nicknamed Bottom Hazles or Lower hazles, while anything below Blackshale was ignored for mining operations in Nottinghamshire it was openly mined less than 20 yards across the boundary in Derbyshire and was a coal smelters and brick manufacturers used in its raw state de to its qualities in heat production. In one Ilkeston brick production factory records existed where they described Hazles as a coal which was poor to ignite but once lit with household coal it burned with ferocity sufficient for mass brick production and they had two coal mines just for mining Hazles which was described as 8' high and tapered off.
High Main and Low Main were two totally different seams generally, but again in places they merged and were known as Low Main, yet this had another anomoly which was these two seams merged at some point to form Middle Main or "shonky seam" and this extended from the old Eastwood pits into the Derbyshire area and was mined in and around Ilkeston and Shipley pits and Maner (not Manor) colliery was sunk to extract this coal, this was well before the days of mechanisation and the NCB.
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Post by John on Dec 23, 2020 13:05:47 GMT -5
It gets confusing as the same seam was given different names across many collieries and also across areas, many faults such as the Shipley Syncline also confused this as in the syncline the coal seams and ground fractured dropped by around 140 feet and while the seams remained, they often matched up with seams lower than them and this faultline ran through Langley Mill along the Erewash Valley and back into the Nottinghamshire coalfield. Things got more confusing as there was High Hazel and Low Hazel seams and at places they intersected and became one seam called Hazles (not Hazels) and there was another Hazles seam below the Blackshale seam which was often nicknamed Bottom Hazles or Lower hazles, while anything below Blackshale was ignored for mining operations in Nottinghamshire it was openly mined less than 20 yards across the boundary in Derbyshire and was a coal smelters and brick manufacturers used in its raw state de to its qualities in heat production. In one Ilkeston brick production factory records existed where they described Hazles as a coal which was poor to ignite but once lit with household coal it burned with ferocity sufficient for mass brick production and they had two coal mines just for mining Hazles which was described as 8' high and tapered off. High Main and Low Main were two totally different seams generally, but again in places they merged and were known as Low Main, yet this had another anomoly which was these two seams merged at some point to form Middle Main or "shonky seam" and this extended from the old Eastwood pits into the Derbyshire area and was mined in and around Ilkeston and Shipley pits and Maner (not Manor) colliery was sunk to extract this coal, this was well before the days of mechanisation and the NCB.
When you read the shaft sinkers records from the 1800's through to the early 1900's, even they were confused sometimes, as even the usual markers they used to identify seams didn't correlate with past identifiers. Mussel beds and similar fossils were what gave them a clue to which seam the borehole had penetrated.
I think the NCB started using seams with Alphabet letters, "A" being the top most seam, presumably the top most "workable" seam in an area?
But back to 1800's boreholes and shaft sinking charts, you'll often see a seam with ?? and "possibly Abdy" after it. I don't think they had any problems identifying Deep Soft, Deep Hard and the other major seams. Deep hard had a fossil bed just above the seam, we used to chip them out of the ripping lip.
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Post by colly0410 on Dec 26, 2020 12:21:00 GMT -5
Where Hucknall pit used to be there's a road called Ashgate Road, they said it was named after a seam worked down Hucknall. But Hucknall never worked the Ashgate, deepest seam worked there was Black Shale, as Maverick says deeper seams were not worked in Notts AFAIK. Remember yabbering to a bloke who'd transferred from a Derbyshire pit who said the Ashgate was a very gassy seam, wonder if that's why it wasn't worked in Notts? There was a hoo-ahh in the Huckall Dispatch local paper letters page about it, many ex miners wanted the name of the road changed to Deep Soft or Black Shale but, it's still called Ashgate Road, well it was when I went to Aldi on Monday to get the christams shopping, that was a mega horrible experience, lol...
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Post by John on Dec 27, 2020 6:39:23 GMT -5
Where Hucknall pit used to be there's a road called Ashgate Road, they said it was named after a seam worked down Hucknall. But Hucknall never worked the Ashgate, deepest seam worked there was Black Shale, as Maverick says deeper seams were not worked in Notts AFAIK. Remember yabbering to a bloke who'd transferred from a Derbyshire pit who said the Ashgate was a very gassy seam, wonder if that's why it wasn't worked in Notts? There was a hoo-ahh in the Huckall Dispatch local paper letters page about it, many ex miners wanted the name of the road changed to Deep Soft or Black Shale but, it's still called Ashgate Road, well it was when I went to Aldi on Monday to get the christams shopping, that was a mega horrible experience, lol... We were going to work the Ashgate at Clifton, NCB boring team had been U/G in various places to prove the seam. Estimated life of pit would have been extended to 50 years. A drift was planned, new larger washery etc. They had even spent thousands on developing the start of the drift from Tuptons 51's goaf and were just about ready to start the drift down when everything was stopped, and we were told near Christmas of 67 production will end in early 68 when the pit will be closed I was in the first lot transferred to Cotgrave in early 68.
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