Heritage
Colliery Lagoons
The colliery lagoons were created in the mid 1980s to manage waste water from Annesley and Newstead pits which needed to ‘settle’ in order to remove clays and other metal deposits before it could be discharged into the River Leen.
Prior to the lagoons being created, the site had been used as a tip for colliery spoil – a mixture of clay, dirt and small coal chippings left over from the mining process, which can be seen in the Country Park’s soils today. Waste water was pumped from the pit and coal preparation plant into the top lagoon, and then gradually filtered down along a series of drainage ditches into the middle and bottom lagoons, finally reaching the smaller ponds near the fishing lakes.
Over time the clays and metal deposits which settled out of the toxic mine water built up and would have eventually filled in the lagoons completely, however, when the collieries closed in 1987 (Newstead) and 2000 (Annesley) the lagoons were left as open water and began to regenerate naturally.
Railyard
The other significant industrial feature in the Country Park’s landscape is that of the railway, the expansion of which went hand in hand with the development of coalfields in the Leen Valley. The Robin Hood railway line occupies one of the earliest tracks to be established in the area, following the route of the Midland Line through Newstead which opened in 1848. The later Great Northern (1881) and the Great Central Line (1897) were both closed in the late 60’s following the recommendations of the Beeching Report.
Today it is hard to imagine the bustling industrial yard which once stood in this place, not only has the track been removed, but from the 1970’s the land once occupied by the yard was used for tipping, meaning there is now little trace of it in the landscape.
One of the few places where you can gain a sense of the Great Central Line, which ran between Manchester and London, is at the far end of the fishing lakes overlooking Hazleford Cliff, where it is possible to see the remnants of a railway embankment sloping down towards the field boundary.
