Derbyshire’s largest colliery had more than its share of mining disasters – with the worst exactly 80 years ago – as Steve Brown recalls.
TRAVELLERS speeding through North Derbyshire on the M1 are passing a much-changed world. What is now Markham Vale was once the heartland of the North Derbyshire coal eld; the familiar headstocks of the colliery winding gear punctuated the landscape as did the smoking chimneys of the coking plants and the grey hills that were waste tips…