Pleasley Pit Country Park

We had heard about this Country Park in a local environmental group newsletter and on a bright Spring day we took ourselves off to Pleasley

Pleasley village lies 3 miles north of Mansfield and 9 miles south of Chesterfield and the colliery is just outside the village by the River Meden on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border

The Pit was sunk in the 1870s and produced coal until 1983. It escaped complete demolition after closure and it still retains its headstocks, engine-houses and steam winders. The whole building is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

The Pit building is open from 10am-2pm each day and you are free to wander around the site and inside the winder house

 

 

If you ask Walt (one of the key volunteers) he will give you a guided tour of the building

 

The clocking on machine

 

One of the winding machines

 

The waste rock which was excavated from the mine was tipped on nearby fields and eventually the soil covered 150 acres. A few years after the mine had closed British Coal agreed that Derbyshire County Council could take over the site and it became a Country Park

Ponds were created, reed beds and native trees were planted

There is plenty of bird life to see as well

 

This is one of the Dragonfly ponds - but it was too early in the year to see any.

For more details of Pleasley Pit and its Country Park see Pleasley Colliery

We completed our short tour of the area by visiting the nearby village of Teversal where we saw its Norman Church ...

 

... and its Manor House - formerly the home of the Molyneux and Carnarvon families and the fictional home of Lady Chatterley. It was built in the mid-eighteenth century initially for use as barn. The Manor Room was converted into a school in 1881. During the 1940’s it saw many activities, including the housing of evacuees and war knitting parties.

There are several cycle/walking trails in the area - mainly along disused railway lines - we will return