A bit of a swift recap of April is in order. A quietish month at the pit, with weather and plenty of off-site preoccupations keeping everyone busy.

We had our first proper Open Day on Easter Sunday, 5th April 2026 to coincide with the wonderful tours of the Newcomen Engine down at Elsecar Heritage Centre.

The weather was on and off; mostly off – wet and invariably windy, but with just enough sunshine to kid ourselves that Easter Eggs might even melt if they sat there long enough.

Tours

Regular volunteers Janet, Jeff, Paul, Chris, Andy 1 and Andy 2 (you know who you are!) were joined by Mark and Harry to welcome visitors and provide tours around the site.

After eating more chocolate than was perhaps necessary or advisable, the crew headed home. The long slow march to Spring still had a little way to go!

April 120 years ago – the old and the new side by side

A newspaper snippet from 120 years ago recently caught our eye, and connects us to the danger of mining and also perhaps the excitement of new horizons – albeit subterranean – in 1906:

BARNSLEY AND DISTRICT.

Sinking Accident at Elsecar

An accident of rather a serious nature happened at the new colliery, which is being sunk at Elsecar for Earl Fitzwilliam. The sinking operations have now reached a depth of about 200 yards. Several shots had been laid and fixed, and in due course Mr R. Blackledge, the contractor, and one of his men went down to see the result. Just as they were nearing the bottom some gas, which evidently the shots had allowed to escape, ignited and caused a flame. The men were badly burned. Attention was given as speedily as possibly.

This piece takes us back to an interesting period when Hemingfield Colliery was approaching its final years, or rather the Barnsley seam was not far from being exhausted, so the Earl decided to sink a new larger pit – Elsecar Main Colliery – down to the Park Gate seam.

We know quite a lot about this period from the notebooks and memoranda of Thomas Newbould at Sheffield Archives (X417) and and Rotherham Local Studies and Archives (RALS 291-B), however it must be said that this incident is not directly referred to!

Blackledge and his brothers had commenced sinking, paid on day work basis, from 21st September 1905, although the first sod had actually been dug by Newbould himself on 17th July 1905. This was no.1, the upcast shaft. The Blackledge brothers finished their work on 17th October 1906 and their deposit was returned. Newbould cut the first sod of the No 2, winding pit on 28th September 1906, after initial work, it would be sunk on contract by William Joyner – another family of pit sinkers.

A colourful article in the Mexborough and Swinton Times later that year provides us with a clear context for the conditions in this part of South Yorkshire at the time, although describing local working men in less-than-flattering terms:

Elsecar is a straggling town, with a look of incompleteness about it.  That is not to be wondered at, for possibly in a decade more, it will be a place of considerable importance. It has a few fairly good shops, and a good number of public-houses. Unfortunately, the public houses are the only places where the sons of toil have to go after their day’s work is done in such a time as this. It is the very few who spend much of their time at home, and the many spend their hard-earned money in a way that confers no benefit on anybody – except the publican.

Mexborough and Swinton Times, 3rd November 1906, p.11

The jaunty journalist continued on industrial developments:

The New Colliery.

Already Elsecar is showing very animated signs of development.

At the far side of the town, in a quiet little valley, between 80 and 90 men are engaged in opening up a new colliery. Over a thousand hands will find employment there once work is started, but that will not be for some time yet.

I went towards the new colliery and gleaned some particulars regarding it.

A Popular Nobleman’s Work

It is to be opened by that popular Yorkshire nobleman – the Earl Fitzwilliam – a son of the soil. Many of our noble men are too fond of going abroad and spending their money away from home. But it is not so with the Earl. He believes in benefiting the people in the midst of whom he lives; and no Yorkshire gentlemen is more popular than Earl Fitzwilliam. And deservedly so.

After incessant toil, covering a period of about 12 months, Mr. Blackledge, the contractor, from Thorncliffe, has just finished his work on the pit shaft. The seam struck has been the Parkgate.

In Hemingfield Colliery, which is about a quarter of a mile distant, and which also belongs to Earl Fitzwilliam, it is the famous Barnsley seam that is being worked.

Robert Blackledge (1855-1919) was the eldest of several brothers (John, b.1857, Joseph, b.1859, Thomas, b.1865, Garibaldi b.1868, and Ellis, b.1871) who started life in a mining family, in the delightfully names village of Welch Whittle, near Chorley in Lancashire, but who travelled widely as contractors for stone blasting and sinking.

They are sometimes described as Blackledge Bros of Thorncliffe. Robert is buried at Thorpe Hesley, not far from where he lived and close to where much of his life’s work took place.