Annesley Colliery was located next to the village of Annesley, to the south of Kirkby-in-Ashfield. It was developed by the Worswick family from Leicestershire, on the estates of the Chaworth-Musters family from Annesley Hall. Work commenced on the sinking of the twin shafts of Annesley Colliery on 1 January 1865. The Top Hard coal seam was reached in 1867 and this seam was the basis for the colliery’s production operations for the next fifty years or so.

Bentinck Colliery was located a short distance south-west of Kirkby-in-Ashfield. It was owned by the New Hucknall Colliery Company and named after the family name of the Dukes of Portland. Bentinck Colliery started production in 1896. A disaster occurred at Bentinck in 1915, when two cages collided in the No.2 winding shaft, resulting in the deaths of ten men and the injury of six others.

At Annesley Colliery, the shafts were sunk to the Deep Hard seam in 1914 and the Deep Hard seam was worked until 1950, together with the Deep Soft seam. The Deep Soft seam continued until 1983. In 1924 the colliery was bought by the New Hucknall Colliery Company, who invested much-needed capital into the mine in order to modernise it.

In the aftermath of the 1926 General Strike the Nottinghamshire coalfield became split, as many of its miners left the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA) and joined the breakaway Nottinghamshire and District Miners’ Industrial Union (NMIU), led by George Spencer. The New Hucknall Colliery Company strongly pressurised its workforce to join the NMIU – even so, approximately one-quarter of the miners at Annesley and Bentinck remained members of the NMA.

In 1937, an agreement was reached between the NMA and the NMIU and they merged to form the Nottinghamshire Miners' Federated Union (NMFU), with Spencer becoming its president. On 1 January 1945 the NMFU became the Nottingham Area of the newly formed National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

Annesley Colliery (Photograph by Robin Stewart-Smith)

Following the nationalisation of the UK coal industry on 1 January 1947, both Annesley and Bentinck became part of the National Coal Board (NCB), East Midlands Division, Area No. 4. In 1967, following an administrative restructuring, both collieries became part of the NCB’s South Nottinghamshire area. Bentinck was the largest colliery in the Nottinghamshire coalfield from the later 1960s through into the early 1970s, with its maximum employment figure of 2,029 full NUM members being attained in 1970. Bentinck was linked with nearby Brookhill Colliery (which was subsequently renamed Bentinck No.4) in 1968, before the latter was fully absorbed into it in 1972. Annesley Colliery featured in two television documentaries in the early 1970s, for the BBC’s Panorama and ITV’s World in Action programmes.

Underground working at Annesley Colliery reached the Tupton seam in 1978. This seam was worked until 1980, when the whole seam was closed owing to geological conditions. By 1981, coal winding up the Annesley shafts ceased, with all the coal being diverted underground to be wound up to the surface at nearby Bentinck Colliery.

During the year-long strike of 1984–5, all but 52 of Annesley's 800 miners crossed the picket line and continued to work; a similarly large proportion of the Bentinck workforce did likewise. After the strike, almost all of the Annesley and Bentinck mineworkers left the NUM to join the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM).

After the strike, production operations at Annesley and Bentinck were coordinated further and the collieries underwent major reconstruction. Most of the coal produced by this complex was sent to Radcliffe-on-Soar power station. In 1988, the two collieries were officially merged and became known as Annesley-Bentinck. This became part of the NCB Nottinghamshire Area in 1985, a merger of the former NCB South and North Nottinghamshire Areas. The NCB was renamed British Coal in 1986. Production at the Bentinck side of the colliery finished in 1991. Annesley-Bentinck closed in 1994, as an indirect consequence of the ‘dash for gas’ and the impending privatisation of the coal industry.

Miners at Annesley-Bentinck 1992 (Photograph from North Notts Newspapers © Johnston Press)

Following the privatisation of the British coal industry in 1994, Annesley-Bentinck was bought in May of that year by Coal Investments, a company led by Malcolm Edwards (the former Commercial Director of British Coal). Production restarted at the colliery. Coal Investments owned six pits around the UK but subsequently went into administration in February 1996. 

Midlands Mining Ltd bought Annesley-Bentinck in July 1996. Although the company initially planned for a 7–9 year production period, in January 1999 it announced that Annesley-Bentinck would finish production early in 2000. Production finished over the weekend of 29–30 January 2000, bringing to an end the era of deep mining in the Ashfield region of Nottinghamshire.

Bentinck Colliery produced two Nottinghamshire miners’ leaders in the period covered by this project. The first was Alfred Eggleshaw, a longstanding NUM branch stalwart who was president of the NUM Nottingham Area from January 1956 until his death in November of that year. Later, Neil Greatrex eventually became national president of the UDM.

This profile was written towards the beginning of our project, further material about Annesley and Bentinck collieries is available at our exhibtion website.