Site Records

Site Name: Tilmanstone Colliery

Pike Road
Eythorne, Kent
OS Grid Ref: TR288505

Sub Brit site visit July 1987 & April 2005

The picket line in 1984

Tilmanstone was earmarked for closure in 1967 but survived and by now most of its output was used as coking blend for the steel industry which was also in crisis. Productivity improved for a while but it was to be short lived By the 1980's both the government and the NCB were determined to make the coal industry viable by closing 'uneconomic' pits but the miners and the NUM were convinced bad management and poor investment were holding the industry back. Things came to a head in 1984 when the NUM called a national strike. The 1984 strike lasted for almost a year and became one of the most controversial and bitter disputes since the General Strike of 1926. When it was over, neither the NCB nor the NUM fully recovered. The NCB was reorganised as British Coal in 1987 and that year both Snowdown and Tilmanstone collieries closed with little opposition. Betteshanger was the last

Coal was transported from the colliery by the East Kent Light Railway. Initially there was a branch from Eythorne to the mine, which was then extended to re-join the main line north of Elvington at some stage (apparently illegally, as the extension is not listed as 'authorised'). The northern junction had a loop, but this and the junction were removed by 1926, leaving the line north of the colliery as a siding. This north part vanished under the colliery waste tip some time after 1959.

There was a platform at the colliery for the use of miners' services, which operated from 1918 to 1929. This was described in timetables as 'Tilmanstone Colliery Yard' and on tickets as 'Tilmanstone Colliery', thus causing obvious confusion with what later became Elvington Halt (originally called Tilmanstone Colliery Halt). This seems to have been deliberate, as the EKLR had no authority to run passenger services over the branch and issuing tickets was technically illegal as the workers service should have contracted with the colliery company, as was standard practice in coalfields elsewhere. With closure of the East Kent Light Railway to passengers in 1948 the line to the colliery was retained until the miners strike in 1984 and finally closed in December 1987. The southern end is now operated as the East Kent Railway, a heritage line.

After closure, the colliery was largely demolished in 1987, the shafts being permanently sealed in April and May that year. During the 1990's the Pike Road Industrial Estate was built on the upper part of the site. The lower part of the site was cleared in 2000 for new industrial units, including Kent Salads' massive new factory. The waste tips on the north side of the site are now the only evidence that the colliery ever existed. No buildings survive at the mine; only three concrete slabs covering the shafts and a small monument now mark the site. The only remaining colliery buildings are at East Langdon, half way between Tilmanstone and Dover where the 'divide station' and power house for the aerial ropeway still stand in the middle of an arable field. As the ropeway reached the cliffs overlooking the Eastern Docks it went into twin tunnels, emerging part way down the cliff face. The bricked up tunnels can still be clearly seen in the cliff face from Dover ferry terminal.

See also: East Kent Light Railway, Wingham Colliery, Guilford Colliery and Woodnesborough Colliery

Sources:

• ‘The Kent Coalfield – its evolution and development’ by A. E. Ritchie. Published 1919 by the Iron & Coal Trades Review
• 'The industrial Eden' by Richard Tilden Sherren (History of Tilmanstone Colliery). Published 1990 by Channel Publications ISBN 0 951565400
• ‘Invicta Coal’ unpublished history of the Kent Coalfield by Jim Davies, Robert Ross Job and Richard Tilden Sherren
• Colonel Stephens Museum web site
• Wikipedia - The East Kent Light Railway (The free encyclopedia)
• Commanet - The Community Archives Network
• Coalfields Heritage Initiative Kent

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