Description: A view looking east from the slopes of Shipley Hill across Shipley Lake. To the right is the remains of Woodside Colliery with groundworks underway for what would become the short-lived Britannia theme park.
By the date of this photograph what had once been the park attached to Shipley Hall (seat of the Miller Mundy family and demolished in the 1940s) had been acquired by Derbyshire County Council, opening as the Shipley Country Park in 1976. Immediately prior to this much of the area had been opencasted for coal, the subsequent restoration accounting for the still rather barren appearance seen here some 10 years or so after such mining ceased.
Woodside Colliery was one of the Shipley Collieries, operated up to 1947 by the Shipley Colliery Company and thereafter by the nationalised National Coal Board. Woodside ceased winding coal in 1960 but was retained as a pumping shaft to drain other mines, the headstocks in this view being used to lift out the submersible pumps for periodic maintenance. The other late surviving Shipley pit, Coppice Colliery, closed in 1966.
The Britannia Park, intended to showcase 'British achievement', opened in 1985 but soon proved unviable, closing after only a few months. From 1987 the site was occupied by another theme park known as The American Adventure, but this ceased operations in 2007.