Elsecar Heritage Centre

Opening up

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Late March ran rapidly into into April as the Friends held their first full Open Day of the year in 2025: Easter Sunday. It was a lovely day, with perhaps the best of the Sunny weather over the long bank holiday weekend. But the volunteers had been kept busy in the weeks building up to the open day itself as you will see.

South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation

Once again we owe a huge thanks to South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation in supporting our activities on site, without them this year we would not have been able to hold an Open Day.

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2024 into 2025. Autumn Fantasia and the long winter.

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2025 is here. There’s no denying. But the weather outside has been less-than-delightful, so we’re starting off by looking back – A more detailed catch-up from Autumn of 2024, with late touches of Winter frost which somewhat delayed the start of 2025.

But first, a great big thank you!

Getting festive with volunteers from the Friends of Hemingfield Colliery, 21st December 2024

To all our volunteers, visitors, supporters and friends. Without your support the Friends would not be able to keep doing their great work in maintaining and sharing the colliery site and its stories with the wider public.

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Hope and Heritage spring eternal, April 2022

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Cold comforts…

2 seasons in one day: snow in the morning of 31st March 2022

Picking up from our previous update at the end of March, you might be forgiven for thinking that the seasons had jumped, with winter returning, as snow fell on site on the morning of 31st March; the pit briefly donning a white cloak, before warmer air, and the green shoots of Spring began to emerge more fully.

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Sustainable developments

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Sunlight highlighting the hillside up at Hemingfield village

Bright and early. Dawn chorus. Fortified for the day, the Friends and regular volunteers made an extra-early start on Saturday 23rd January 2022, at 8.30 a.m.

Why so keen?

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Winter chills, Summer sun!

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This weekend the group continued work on the renewal of the garden of Pump House Cottage, and improving accessibility to the site to suport our National Lottery Heritage Fund project – Hemingfield’s Hidden History. All the while basking in the presence of a summer-like sun!

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Heritage re-opened, Sat & Sun 18-19th Sept 2021

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Heritage Open Days (Photo credit: Andrew Jones)

Heritage Open Days are a blessing. An opportunity to share; to learn and also to enjoy what feels like the beginning of some sort of return to a more normal flow.

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Sunshine after the rain, Sat 20th July 2019

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Another cracking day at Hemingfield. Site Director Glen opened the gates to regular volunteers John, Mike and Chris. The sun was out, the heat was on and all was set for another fun day on site. And off it – but more of that anon…

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Elsecar Poppy Trail

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Elsecar Remembers (19th Oct -5th Dec 2018)

As we mentioned in a recent blog post, a collection of local community groups, charities and educational bodies have joined together to create Elsecar Remembers, a project to commemorate the memory of 72 local lives lost in the First World War.

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Open Day, Saturday 6th October 2018

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October mild

The Friends of Hemingfield Colliery arrived early on site, swinging the gates wide open and stepping into the pit yard. Expecting rain, but finding mostly dry terrain and pleasant working conditions in the mild autumnal air. Looking over across the valley over to Hemingfield proper, the sky was cloudy but blue, and the farmed fields in the distance contrasted with the dense and beautifully dis-colouring trees nearby. It is a turning point in the year when days shorten, clocks go back and woolly jumpers emerge.  American poet Robert Frost put it crisply:

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

(From ‘October’, published in A Boy’s Will, 1913)

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