Support us & volunteer

From volunteering as a guide or reenactor, to helping us maintain our equipment or donating your time or a little money – every little helps.

Volunteering

New volunteers are always welcomed. By volunteering at Snibston Colliery you will be helping to preserve and provide public access to the historic Snibston Colliery buildings. As a volunteer you will become a member of the Snibston Heritage Trust, and it will not cost you anything as membership is free.

As we work on a site owned by Leicestershire County Council our volunteer members must comply with County Council volunteering terms and conditions. These will be outlined at your first volunteer session.

Volunteers meet at Snibston every Monday from 10.00am until early afternoon (except Bank Holidays) and you can stay for as long as you like or just come when you are free. We are pleased that you will be able to give us any time you can afford.

There may also be work you can do at home when it is convenient to you.

Colliery Tours

The volunteers have run a programme of Snibston Colliery tours since 2022. Our team of colliery guides and re-enactors tell the story of Snibston Colliery to public tours, group tours, school children and students. You can help with these tours by,

Becoming a colliery guide.
You don’t need to have worked in the mines-two of our guides are not former miners, but we can train you to become a ‘miner’. We provide you with NCB overalls, lamp and other equipment. Experienced miners are on hand to teach you how to tell an authentic story.

Help to assist with the tour.
For safety reasons we always have a least two volunteers on a tour, one guiding and the other at the rear of the group assisting.

Become a re-enactor and create an historic character who will entertain and educate the public on site, whether on a tour or just visiting the Country Park or playground. We can help you to research and develop your characters and story as well as provide you with a period costume.

What we achieve

Volunteer

All members of the Trust are volunteers. We meet regularly and produce the colliery tours, school/colleges sessions and special events.

Research

Working in partnership with the Coalville Heritage Society we collect, catalogue and document historic documents, photographs, and research local mining and Coalville.

Restore

With meticulous restoration and careful conservation our members meet weekly to help to care for the mine site and its historic mining machinery.

Educate

We provide on-site and classroom sessions where re-enactors engage pupils in the story of the colliery and of children working in the coalmines.

SNIBTSON HERITAGE TRUSTEES

Our objectives

Snibston Heritage Trust is a registered charity (Charity No. 1190436) and abides by its legal obligation as laid down by the Charities Commission. Founded in 2020 we are a not-for-profit Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO).

The Trust is run purely by volunteers and our main objectives are:

To preserve for the benefit of our cultural and industrial heritage those historic industrial and architectural remains, including all forms of archival material, handwritten, printed and oral as may exist in the town of Coalville in the County of Leicestershire, in the form of mining remains and related industrial workings, both above and below ground.
To advance the education of the public concerning the industrial history of Coalville in Leicestershire, in particular the history of mining.
To provide public and educational access to the historic Snibston Colliery.

Colliery work

What kind of work do we do at the historic mine?

Building maintenance such as painting, simple repairs and cleaning etc
Site maintenance such as weeding, landscaping and litter picking.
Historic mining machinery conservation and restoration including painting, mechanical repairs, interpretation and research.

The Trust

Help run the Trust by:

Helping to organise and deliver special events on the Snibston site or at other events around the region.
Financial management.
Help to promote the work of the Trust and our activities to the press and other organisations around the Midlands.
Supporting the Trust with its
administration.Providing help with writing articles and publications about the mine and the Trust.
Becoming a Trustee.

The Archive

In partnership with the Coalville Heritage Society, we need help with:

Historic photograph and document cataloguing and storage.
Keeping the collection database up to date in the Society website www.coalvilleheritage.org.uk
Research into the history of Mining and of Coalville.
Help to prepare articles and other publications.
Keeping the archive clean and well conserved.

Leave feedback on Trip Advisor

Been on a recent tour with us? We’d really appreciate the feedback.

Donations / Bequests

Snibston Heritage Trust (Charity Commission Registration Number 1190436) is a not-for-profit charitable incorporated organisation ran wholly by volunteers. The Trust helps with the upkeep and running of the historic Snibston Colliery, only one of five such colliery sites in the country.

The buildings are schedule monuments and listed and therefore their upkeep is expensive, using materials that are sympathetic and conservation grade. The Trust also maintains a collection of rare mining machinery to show the public what mining was like in the 1960s/80s.

Why do we do it?

The purpose for our many hours of unpaid work and maintaining the local mining heritage is so future generations can learn and understand the mining culture of Coalville and Leicestershire.

The Trust provides public colliery tours, as well as hosting group visits. We work closely with schools and have given colliery tours and mining history learning sessions to 1,000s of school children. We preserve mining photographs and documents, as well as a mining artefacts used in the industry or by miners and their families.

The Trust members/volunteers give our time freely and believe in keeping the mining heritage alive, but we can’t do it without funds.

Giving the public the best visitor experience is very expensive. The Trust is thrilled that both local, regional and national businesses have been able to help us. Our Benefactors and grants to date include:

East Midlands Airport Community Fund
Vodafone
North West Leicestershire UK-SPF
Leicestershire Probation Services – Community Payback Scheme

Donations and grants have enabled us to buy conservation grade paint to restore our exhibits. The Trust has also benefited from free data periods as well as funding to create this website.

This is where you come in

Please support us in any way you can;

Come on a colliery tour.
Make a donation.
Sponsor a specific project?

We would like to hear from companies and businesses who would like to sponsor a project for direct marketing purposes through on-site publicity or via their own marketing or social media.

Leave us a gift in your will.

Leaving a gift can be done in three ways,

Pecuniary gift – a fixed sum of money.
Specific gift – a particular item e.g. property, artwork, shares etc. which the Trust can hold onto or sell.
Residuary gift – this is a percentage or all of what’s left after other gifts and expenses are settled.

For further information please contact the Secretary on 07709957921 or email info@snibstoncolliery.org.uk

The Trust would also like to collect your families cherished mining photographs, documents and artefacts, or anything related to the Leicestershire mining industry. Please contact us on the above telephone number or email.