Cambridgeshire

Wicken...Soham...Isleham...Sawston

The Cambridgeshire miners came mainly from the village of Wicken, which is north east of Cambridge. This locality has no history of coal mining, but here in the middle of the 19th century a very unusual mining industry briefly flourished. They mined fossilised dinosaur dung known as coprolites, which were dug up in large open cast pits then ground up to make fertilizer. The diggings at Wicken were amongst the most productive in the industry and one pit yielded 2,000 tons per acre. It was a very dangerous job with many fatalities and the workers had a reputation for heavy drinking and antisocial behaviour. Coprolite digging went from boom to bust in less than 20 years and by the mid 1870's left a pool of skilled miners in need of employment who were snapped up by the expanding Hucknall collieries. Most of the Cambridgeshire families were housed on Orchard Street and other nearby streets off Watnall Road.

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