All creatures…

Pump House Cottage Garden, Saturday 15th March 2025 (Photo credit: Paul Moon)

Regular volunteers Paul, Janet & Jeff and Andy were on site on Saturday 15th March 2025. Thanks to support from South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation we can open the gates and operate on site with volunteers and members of the public. 

Spring time tidying was very much the order of the day, clearing the garden flower beds and paths of Pump House Cottage. So much for the flora. As for the fauna, scarcely a minute had passed on site before a kestrel was spotted high up on the main headgear.

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December highs and lows

Snow-dusted winter landscape view over the railway line and canal towards Hemingfield from the rear of Hemingfield Colliery in early December 2023
Frosty view, 2nd December 2023

Dead Chillness reigns. And yet my heart would say –
“Winter! I love thee well.” Though birds forlorn
Send no glad anthem from the snowy spray,
Yet gushing melodies are hither borne
From infant Dearne. Drear in the early morn
Ye seem, wild Alpine woods! – that guard this child
Of moorland springs, – ye summer-green, all torn;
Yet, Winter gives a garment undefiled
Of snowflakes light. Joy now the day-beam brings,
And sun-tipp’d gems light up the frozen wild…

Thomas Lister,  ‘Winter Scene [In the wooded valley below Dearne Spring]’,
from The Yorkshire Magazine, Vol.I, no.IV, January 1872, p.121
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Spring ebbs and June’s Summer flows

June. A beautiful time of year. The first steps of summer, without the school holidays. When the sun’s heat brings plants, people, and other wild-life out into the longer light of day.

Bright blue sky over Hemingfield Colliery - the winding engine and pumping engine houses in the mid-ground, with the colourful flowers of Pump House Cottage in the foreground.
Striking image of light and life at Hemingfield Colliery, June 2023 (Photo credit: Mitchell Sutherland)
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Open days and open minds in April, 2023

A low-level drone side view of Hemingfield Colliery site, at the top of the photograph a range of buildings fill the shot, the old pumping engine house on the left, the winding engine house in the middle, and roofless surface haulage building to the right. In the foreground the canal basin can be seen through trees, and in the middle across the picture is the line of the railway, currently out of use.
Chimney smoke rises as the Friends seek shelter on Easter Monday, 10th April 2023 (Photo Credit: Simon Hollis)

April 2023 saw a host of activities on site, as the weather tried, time after time, to confound and confuse. For the Friends it was a month of Open Days at Easter; of gardening and tidying, and of preparation for better days to come, or at least better weather on the many working days to come.

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Uncovering the Past

A short update from a busy weekend on site with visits and volunteers coming and going throughout the day. Sunshine casts more light than heat now, as autumn sheds the trees’ summer coat, and we all begin to wrap up ever more. Plenty of work in hand, at Pump House Cottage and around the site supporting our National Lottery Heritage Fund Hemingfield’s Hidden Heritage project. Thanks to National Lottery players for saving and sustaining our heritage.

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