Snibston Discovery Park
Coordinates: 52°43′33.22″N 1°22′59.79″W / 52.7258944°N 1.3832750°W
Snibston is an area east of Ravenstone, north west Leicestershire, in the English Midlands. Originally rural, part of Snibston was transformed into a coal mining village by the opening of coal mines by the Snibston Colliery Company in the early 1830s. This industrial part of Snibston was subsequently subsumed into the developing town of Coalville, though small rural areas of Snibston survive within the civil parishes of Ravenstone with Snibston and Hugglescote and Donington le Heath. In the part of Snibston within the latter civil parish stands the 13th-century church of St Mary, noted as the smallest church still in use for regular worship in England. The main Snibston Colliery was sunk in 1831, and after its closure the Snibston Discovery Park with the Snibston Discovery Museum (now closed) was built on part of the colliery site. The population is included in the civil parish of Ravenstone with Snibston.
The famous pioneering railway engineers George Stephenson and his son Robert Stephenson came to the Snibston area in the late 1820s in their involvement with the Leicester and Swannington Railway, which was being built to carry coal from this area to Leicester. Quick to appreciate the potential, in 1831 they sank shafts to the coal on the north side of the railway near the centre of what is now Coalville. The choice of position for the mine was a little unfortunate since there were problems with water and hard rock, and the Stephensons were probably not entirely happy with what was to be named Snibston Colliery No. 1.
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