In all the excitement about the south-west, no one has responded to John
Waudby’s question about the abandonment plans for Clifton Colliery,
Nottingham, which I see closed in July 1968 – so presumably the plans date
from that period.
Unfortunately John you do not say whether or not the roads are associated
with a face or are simply headings into virgin coal. You do suggest that
they may be “something to do with "cover" over the seam to the Bunter
Strata”. This may be so, but I assume that the Bunter is an aquifer and any
workings passing a 150 foot (vertical separation) warning line (a green line
verged in green and endorsed ‘Aquifer’ on the working plan), would have had
to follow a precise process (which I now forget) of a reduced sized heading
with a constant pattern of boreholes fanning out in advance – in order to
detect water and prevent an inrush. It is likely that any face approaching
the 150 foot caution line would have been getting noticeably damp, and
certainly would not have been allowed to pass the line. I think dams had to
be built once a second warning line had been reached. I seem to remember
that this system was introduced as a consequence of the accident at
Knockshinnoch Castle Mine in Ayrshire, where a heading up the rise broke
into a peat bog. The 138/- and 139/- (that was a common dialler’s notation
for feet and inches) might fit such a scenario, but I think not the 3/-,
2/-, 5/9 and 1/10. The latter might be seam thicknesses, but they vary such
a lot. Price information would have no place on a modern abandonment plan.
You might find it on earlier (pre NCB) working plans, which were sometimes
submitted as abandonment plans.
Can you give more clues as to the context in which they appear on the plan.
Regards,
Mike Gill
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.7 - Release Date: 12/04/2005
|