The Bolsover Colliery Company was a major mining concern established to extract coal from land owned by the Duke of Portland. At its peak the business was a constituent of the FT 30 index of leading companies on the London Stock Exchange.
Bainbridge secured the rights to mine coal at Creswell in 1894 and shaft sinking for Creswell Colliery began under the direction of J. P. Houfton in September that year. Coal was reached at 450 yards and production began in 1897. The colliery had two shafts and access to between three and four square miles of coal reserves. By 1901 the colliery was producing 2700 to 3000 tons of coal daily and in the July, 3001 tons was delivered to the surface in one day, a world record for coal production at the time. A model village was built to accommodate some of the workforce.[2]
In 1899 Bainbridge secured a further lease from the Duke of Portland for land at Crown Farm near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire: coal was reached in 1905.[1]
In 1933 the company's Bolsover, Clipstone, Creswell, Mansfield, Rufford and Thorsby Collieries employed 9,369 men extracting 4.5 million tons of coal from the Top Hard, Waterloo and High Hazel seams.[3]
Demise of the business
The company's collieries were acquired by the National Coal Board on nationalisation in 1947. Bolsover Colliery closed in 1993[4] and Creswell Colliery closed in 1991.[5]
