Bevercotes Colliery - a previously unpublished image.

From a story by John Walton, pictures by Alan Marsden:
"When Bank Hall pit closed there was no work for the likes of me in Burnley, and if you want work you've got to travel to find it." That's Syd Mason speaking. Nineteen years a miner in Burnley, he found himself without a job when Bank Hall closed for safety reasons earlier this year. So Syd uprooted himself from the home in Myers Street he had known all his 40 years and moved 130 miles to Bevercotes Colliery, on the edge of Sherwood Forest in North Nottinghamshire. He has now been dubbed "Mayor of Ollerton" by the 60 local families who followed him to the neat, red brick housing estate at Boughton, near Ollerton, five miles from the pit head at Bevercotes. Six hundred men, nearly all underground workers, are still needed at Bevercotes, reputed to be Europe's most modern colliery, to work the pit to its full capacity. Nearly 100 of the men made redundant when Bank Hall closed have still to find jobs.

Already 750 men are at Bevercotes, turning out 20,000 tons of coal a week to feed the enormous appetites of the giant power stations along the River Trent and with a full workforce it is estimated that two million tons of coal a year could be produced with two faces working to full capacity.

The article has favourable comments from Syd Mason, Barry Royal, Brian Shackleton, Alan Bantick and their families about their new life in Boughton.