Wow. 2025 rattled by at a fair old lick, and already the new year of 2026 is upon us.

After a winter pause for the Christmas break, we are planning for the year ahead, but first, a little glance back over our shoulder at 2025…

Hive of activity

In 2025, the Friends and volunteers focused on site maintenance and preparing and hosting  public open days and working with other local groups on heritage projects.

As ever, our volunteers gave hundreds of hours of their time to maintaining and opening up the site, as well as working with other heritage and volunteering groups locally.

Not quite a twelve-days-of-Christmas countdown, but the year in summary form would include some of the following, perhaps to a jaunty tune.

Four paranormal night time visits, in January, April, July and September.

Two Elsecar Heritage Centre volunteers group visits.

One successful fund bid. The Friends secured funding for the annual site public and civil liability insurance from South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation which enabled us to continue our activity and plan new public events. Huge thanks to them!

Days of phenomenal Heritage Open Days celebrations – in September, on site and down at Old Moor RSPB.

The Heritage Open Days (HODs) in September, allowed public access and shared the colliery’s history, supported by national and regional publicity.

Huge thanks to Alvin and the great team down at Old Moor RSPB for inviting us and other groups down to Old Moor to host our exhibition and illustrated talk on the History of the Elsecar Branch of the Dearne and Dove Canal.

And a big clean up down at Tingle Bridge – 7 bags of rubbish, a trolley, a sign, a basket and loads of other old crap!

We rounded off the test with a big clean up of rubbish down at Tingle Bridge.

Looking Forward

Looking to 2026. We have identified a number of priority fundraising activities. The Friends directors have written a new Forward Plan for repairing and conserving the site.

We’re under no illusions; there are major challenges in the backlog of restoration required after decades of vandalism, neglect, fire and theft which have all left their scars.

Nevertheless we remain committed to conserving, sharing and celebrating the heritage of our unique surviving colliery site, together with its wider connections at Elsecar the historic Fitzwilliam Wentworth Estate around Wentworth Woodhouse.

We’re also planning a number of research projects, including mining history publications, and planning a revised version of our Elsecar colliery disaster booklet.

We’re especially looking forward to working with others on the exciting Mining the Past project with Warwick University’s Modern Records Centre.

We’re also looking to improve on site exhibition and interpretation resources. To support this, we began the new year welcoming our newest volunteer: