East Midlands Demolition has applied every ounce of its reclamation knowledge to the Clipstone Colliery project, a massive undertaking designed to restore the site of the Clipstone Colliery on the edge of ‘The Dukeries’ area of Nottinghamshire. The Clipstone site, which takes its name from the village of Clipstone, has endured more than 70 years of heavy coal mining: and East Midlands Demolition, called in to turn the clock back, has progressed to a stage where it has received a special award from the National Coal Board for outstanding personal service to the environment.
The National Coal Board owns both the Clipstone Colliery and the project to take it down and reclaim the land it stood on. The Board turned to East Midlands Demolition with a brief to remove all buildings and structures from the site, once a qualified infill company had completed a commission to fill in the 920 metre deep mine shafts.
The approach EMD took to the Clipstone Colliery demolition encapsulates the philosophies both of the region and of the company. Once the company had completed its removal of site structures and materials, almost 96% of everything thrown up during the demolition had been recycled and reused. From copper pipes to steel girders, East Midlands Demolition was able to reclaim vast quantities of material, including quantities of both Type 1 and 6F2 recycled concrete.
Recycling from the old Clipstone site was augmented by the use of reclaimed materials from other construction projects. East Midlands Demolition was able to use correctly certified subsoil, thrown up by the widening of the M1 in Nottinghamshire, to backfill areas from which it had removed structural foundations.
Environmental sensitivity doesn't just cover recycling. EMD garnered significant praise for its overall handling of a major and potentially noisy project close to the residents of Clipstone village. The project carried emotional weight as well as the propensity for noise pollution and visual disturbance — through compassionate overall management and the exemplary use of modern reclamation techniques, East Midlands Demolition has been able to leave the Clipstone Colliery site with the gratitude of the locals and the official recognition of the National Coal Board.
As befits a project of such magnitude, the stages of EMD's Clipstone Colliery demolition project have been tightly regimented and intensely worked. The company began by clearing the colliery grounds of all superficial material, before going to work on safely taking down every building and superstructure (with the exception of the giant headstocks, whose fate is still under discussion). At every stage during these above ground processes, East Midlands Demolition was separating site materials into reclaim piles: brick; steel; concrete; water and waste pipes; electrical cabling and wiring.
Once the surface work was completed, EMD turned to the areas below ground. Foundations, the remains of steel girders and a 9m deep training pit were all made safe and correctly filled before preparing the Colliery grounds for reclamation.
The reclamation project specified a return to the tillable field areas that had occupied the land outside Clipstone village prior to the first sinking of the coal mine in 1922. With the foundations and training gallery made safe, East Midlands Demolition was able to level the land and prepare it for future growth.
The only evidence left that a coal mine had ever sunk into the earth around Clipstone village is the pair of headstocks, the powerhouse and the winding engine houses, which stand alone in an impeccable green field. There are two schools of thought regarding their disposition: one is that they should remain standing as a monument to the hard work of all the men who went down into the pits during the Colliery's nearly 90 year existence. The other urges their further dismantling to prevent them becoming dangerous in the future.
