Kellingley Colliery

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Kellingley Colliery is one of the newest of the few deep coal mines left in Britain today. It is situated about 1 1/2 miles east of Knottingley in Yorkshire. Its exact position was mainly influenced by the close proximity of road, rail and canal.

Sinking the two shafts started in earnest in 1960. Sandy and porous geology down to about 600 feet (180 m) was waterlogged and about 36 boreholes around each shaft position had subzero temperature brine pumped through them which froze the ground down to about 640 feet (200 m). The sinking personnel then had to work in subzero temperatures until the shafts were sunk below this frozen ground. The shafts were eventually sunk to a depth of around 800 yards (730 m).

After a concrete lining sealed the shafts, the cooling brine was stopped and the frozen ground allowed to thaw out. A thin cement like mixture was then pumped, at high pressure, through holes bored through the concrete lining of the shafts, into the water bearing strata. When this set, it sealed out most of the water leaking through into the shafts and stabilized the ground around the upper part of the shafts. However, the pressure needed to pump in the mixture also caused the ground above to bulge up unevenly, causing the Winding Engine towers mounted above the shafts to tilt slightly. This had been anticipated and provision had been made to jack up each of the four legs that each tower stood upon. This was done regularly during this pumping phase to bring back the towers to the correct alignment.

To keep the shafts to the correct alignment the age-old method of using plumb lines was used. Four steel lines, evenly spaced, were suspended around the inside of each shaft, all the way to the bottom of the shafts. When planning and building the surface infrastructure for the new colliery, facilities were provided for the employment of 3000 mineworkers but due to updated methods and machinery, only about 2000 were ever employed there at any one time.

Quite a number of National and European output records were established during its lifetime under the management of the National Coal Board and British Coal.

[edit] Location Grid

	North: Wetherby
West: Knottingley	Kellingley Colliery	East: Goole
	South: Pontefract

The exact location of the colliery could be open to dispute as it lies directly on the West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire boundary line with coal faces lying on both sides.

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