Former deep coal mine at Shipley, Derbyshire, closed in the 1960s; Woodside no.3 shaft survives as a minewater pumping station within Shipley Country Park.
Woodside Colliery formed part of the Shipley Colliery complex in Amber Valley, Derbyshire, an estate with coal mining activity traceable from the sixteenth century on land belonging to the Miller-Mundy family. Large-scale organised extraction at Shipley expanded significantly from 1734 and further from 1830 when shafts were sunk to the Waterloo and Deep Hard seams. The colliery complex eventually comprised three pits working fifteen seams of coal across 176 acres with thirty railway sidings.
Following the death of Alfred Edward Miller Mundy in 1920, the Shipley Colliery Company assumed full control and operated the mines until nationalisation in 1947, when the National Coal Board took over. Woodside and the associated Coppice pit were closed in the 1960s as uneconomical, ending more than 250 years of deep mining at Shipley. The Woodside no.3 shaft was retained as a minewater control pumping station.
After reclamation works by the National Coal Board between 1970 and 1974, the land was transferred to Derbyshire County Council and opened as Shipley Country Park in 1976.
Coal mining at Shipley has a long recorded history. The Shipley estate was mentioned in the Domesday Book, and records from the fourteenth century describe it as a sporting estate. From the sixteenth century, coal began to provide income for the owners. Large-scale organised mining commenced in 1734 when the estate passed to the Miller-Mundy family. By 1722 coal mining was already a significant activity, and around 1765 the Miller-Mundy family took direct control of running the mines. The Nutbrook Canal, engineered by Benjamin Outram, was opened in 1796 to carry coal from Shipley to the Erewash Canal; it measured 4.5 miles in length with thirteen locks and was funded in part by the colliery owners. In 1830 shafts were sunk to the Waterloo and Deep Hard seams, at depths of approximately 100 yards and 240 yards respectively. By 1832 the Shipley pits were producing coal for transport by rail, and by 1872 more than 90,000 tons were being dispatched annually by rail to the London Coal Exchange and other markets. By around 1880, according to Trueman's account, more than a thousand people were employed at the collieries with an average output of approximately 300,000 tons annually.
The Woodside Colliery formed part of this complex alongside the Coppice and Shipley pits. In 1857 an explosion of gas at the Shipley Colliery, owned at the time by A.M. Mundy, killed eight people. The complex worked fifteen seams of coal and at its peak, Woodside alone produced one million tons of coal in 1959. In February 1881 approximately a thousand Ilkeston miners employed at the Mundy collieries came out on strike in an unsuccessful attempt to resist an increase in working hours. With the death of Alfred Edward Miller Mundy in 1920, his family divested personal control in favour of the Shipley Colliery Company, which the family had founded and which administered the three pits of Shipley, Coppice, and Woodside. The Shipley Colliery Company ran the complex until nationalisation in 1947, when control passed to the National Coal Board.
Under the National Coal Board, the Woodside and Coppice pits continued in production. The two pits eventually merged their operations, and Coppice mined its last coal on 26 August 1966. The Woodside and Coppice pits were closed in the 1960s as uneconomical, bringing to a close more than 250 years of deep mining at Shipley. This left a legacy of spoil heaps, derelict buildings, polluted lakes, and thirty abandoned mine shafts. The Woodside no.3 shaft was retained after closure and has since been operated as a minewater control pumping station. In the 1950s and 1960s, in parallel with the decline of deep mining, the National Coal Board began opencast working that significantly altered the landscape; this programme continued from 1970 to July 1974 under formal permission, with a further two years spent contouring the site, seeding fields and meadows, and planting trees. The reclaimed land was transferred to Derbyshire County Council, and Shipley Country Park opened in May 1976 as a memorial to the mining history of the area. The park encompasses the former colliery landscape, the remains of the Nutbrook Canal, and the water features created during the mining era. The site of the former Woodside Colliery has subsequently been developed as part of the Shipley Lakeside scheme.
