Barnsley Main Pit - July 2014

Barnsley Main Colliery - July 2014

Introduction:

Not my first ever colliery explore, that was Wistow on the Selby Coal Field, but definitley my first ever 'traditional' colliery wander that featured the famous lattice and wheel style headstock.

There's not an awful lot of this pit still standing sadly other than the headstock and winding house, however in an age where deep coal mining in Britian has come to an end, you take what you can get!

Explored again with Stephen.

History:

[if lt IE 9]> <![endif]StartFragmentThe loss of 361 men and boys, some as young as 10 YEARS OLD, was caused by two separate explosions on 13 December 1866 at Oaks colliery and is commemorated by a nearby memorial that is also listed. Barnsley Main colliery eventually took over the workings of the Oaks colliery. There were also disasters at the site in 1847 (73 deaths), and 1942 and 1947 (22 fatalities in total/ The surviving engine HOUSE and the pithead structures at the disused colliery have been listed as Grade II. Similar structures have all but disappeared following the decline of the industry during the 1980s. Deep mining had taken place on the colliery site since late Georgian times. In 1984, before the year-long miners' strike, there were 170 working collieries in Britain, EMPLOYING more than 190,000 people.EndFragment