Pit checks from Cotgrave Colliery found by artist in Chicago, Illinois

Collectors items from Cotgrave’s mining community have been unearthed thousands of miles away in Chicago, and will soon be on their way back home.

Fifty years ago, Cotgrave grew from a village of around 750 people to a town of over 5,000 due to its profitable coal colliery built in the 1960s to supply coal to fuel the Ratcliffe on Soar power station.

Hundreds of experienced miners recently laid off in Wales, Nottinghamshire and the North East, relocated with their families to the swiftly growing town and large housing estates, a shopping centre, pubs and the Miners’ Welfare Club built to accommodate the growing population.

The miners used pit checks or tokens to keep tabs on who was in the mine at any given time, and each worker at Cotgrave was issued with both a circular and a square token.

Maurice Brown, of Cotgrave Welfare Club, said: “All persons going underground would give the square tally to the banks man when entering the cage. On coming out of the mine you would give the round tally to the banks man.

“They were then sent back to the lamp room and put on a board where the workers would pick them up for their next shift.”

When the colliery was decommissioned in the 1990s, most of the pit checks disappeared and, since an electronic card system was introduced, these items from the old system started to be becoming collectors’ items.

So there was a degree of surprise when Catherine Jacoby, an artist from Chicago, USA, contacted the cotgravecolliery.co.uk website offering her collection of pit checks.

She had acquired the 43 square-shaped brass checks, all stamped for Cotgrave Colliery with individual numbers ranging from 204 to 3037, to use in an art project, but no longer had use for them and wanted to return them to where they had belonged.

She told website manager, Russ Hamer: “I bought the checks from an antique dealer in Chicago in around 2005. He had a business that bought estates from around the world. At the time, I did not even know the word colliery meant to be honest. I always thought they would end up in a piece of artwork.

“Fast forward to a good studio clean-out, and I found them again and looked them up to see where this Cotgrave place was. Well, an email later, I am chatting with you and making a much better art project of getting them back to where they can be of some purpose! So thrilled they’ve found themselves a permanent home.”

Russ said that this was “such wonderful generosity” from Catherine as these checks can sell for anything between £5 and £20 each on eBay.

Maurice has now organised a display case for the checks, along with an explanation of their original purpose. They will be handed over to the club shortly.

Russ added: “It’s hoped that there are miners still living that can identify their own check.

“Hopefully they will then be seen by many, impart a little historical information, and help to keep alive the memory of Cotgrave Colliery which was such an important part of the town’s history, now gone with little trace.”