A Miner Migration

In the 1870's the population of Hucknall more than doubled in size to meet the demand for labour in the rapidly expanding coal industry, and within this period the steepest rise occured in the second half of the decade.
The Ellis family and their partners had invested a great deal of money in the Hucknall collieries and, probably in a bid to get a fast return, a large proportion of the workers employed in the early years were experienced miners. The alternative of training raw recruits was a time consuming and costly process, althought framework knitters took well to underground work.
Men with the required skills were in short supply in Nottinghamshire and the majority of the recruits came from outside the county from established coalfields or localities where other types of mining took place. The Hucknall collieries had much to offer a prospective employee. They were modern by the standards of the day and consequently safer than some of the older mines. The rates of pay were good and low rent newly built family accommodation was available.
The new recruits brought with them their families and sometimes took in young unmarried relatives as lodgers so they also could gain employment. Often groups of related families came with all the able bodied men employed in the mines. New arrivals from a particular locality were usually housed near to each other forming small enclaves within the town.
In the early years a variety of accents and dialects would have been heard underground and it must have been quite a challenge for the management to bring such diverse group of men together to work as a team.