Brookhouse Colliery was a coal mine within the

Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham The Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham is a metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. It is named after its main settlement of Rotherham. The wider borough spans a larger area and covers the outlying towns of Maltby, Swinton, Wath-upo ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the north, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north-east, Lincolnshire ...

, England. It was operational between 1929 and 1985. To develop coal seams in the area, the Sheffield Coal Company opened a new colliery between Swallownest and Beighton, at that time on the borders of Rotherham Rural District and

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

but now just within the borough of

Rotherham Rotherham ( ) is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the River Rother, South Yorkshire, River Rother, from which the town gets its name, and the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don. It is the largest settlement ...

. The company, which became part of the

United Steel Companies The United Steel Companies was a steelmaking, engineering, coal mining and coal by-product group based in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England. History The company was registered in 1918 and the following year saw a joining together of ste ...

in 1937, already owned other collieries in the area, particularly the Birley Collieries and that at Aston Common, known as North Staveley Colliery. Brookhouse was not opened until 1929 and linked with its neighbours underground. The site also included coke ovens and by-products plants supplying metallurgical coke to the iron and steel industry, particularly those in

Scunthorpe Scunthorpe () is an industrial town in Lincolnshire, England, and the county's third most populous settlement after Lincoln, England, Lincoln and Grimsby, with a population of 81,286 in 2021. It is the administrative centre and largest settleme ...

. The colliery passed to the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "ve ...

on nationalisation in 1947 and was closed in 1985. After closure the site became part of a long-held plan by Rotherham Borough Council, Sheffield City Council and North East Derbyshire District Council to create the northern extension to the Rother Valley Country Park. The first part of the plan, the southern part of which was commenced in 1976, was to extract coal by opencasting from the area before commencement of landscaping.

References

*''East of Sheffield'' by Roger Milnes. "Forward" - The journal of the Great Central Railway Society, No.16, July 1984. (This article also uses unpublished material researched for "East of Sheffield" from various sources including members of the Kiveton and Wales Local History Group). *Official Company Handbook of the United Steel Companies. {{coord, 53, 21, 13, N, 1, 19, 10, W, display=title, type:landmark_region:GB Coal mines in Rotherham Coal mines in South Yorkshire Underground mines in England 1929 establishments in England 1985 disestablishments in England