First pits in the Leen Valley

In March 1861 Edward Shipley Ellis, his brother Alfred Ellis, William Paget and William Walker formed the Hucknall Colliery Company (H.C.C.) and began the sinking of Hucknall No.1 colliery in Watnall Lane on land leased by the Duke of Portland. It was the first colliery in the Leen Valley.
The Ellis family and their partners business interests were primarily in the north Leicestershire coalfield. John Ellis (1789-1862), father of the Ellis brothers, was founder and a director of the highly profitable Leicester-Swannington Railway, which brought coal from the Coleorton, Whitwick and other nearby pits to Leicester.
Although the partners were familiar with the economics and operations of the coal industry in Leicestershire, the Hucknall collieries were a signficantly more costly and risky venture. In the Leicestershire Wolds coal was relatively easy to mine from exposed outcrops and shallow seems, by contrast, at Hucknall the coal lay in seems deep underground. Coal production at No. 1 started in 1864 and the sinking of No.2 Colliery began in 1866.

John Edward Ellis

John Edward Ellis, the son of Edward S. Ellis, soon became the driving force in the development of the Hucknall coalfield and in 1868, at the age of only twenty seven, assumed overall control of the H.C.C. Ellis was a Quaker, and considered the role of an employer also carried with it a moral responsibility for the health, education and spiritual well-being of both employees and their families. Ellis took these duties upon himself with sincerity and enthusiasm, and used his influence to great effect to build schools and improve local sanitation with the opening of Hucknall's first waterworks in 1881. Ellis's experiences with the miners of Hucknall and their families changed his politics from Tory to Liberal and in 1885 he was elected Member of Parliament for the Rushcliffe constituency of Nottinghamashire.