Kilnhurst Colliery, formerly known as either Thrybergh or Thrybergh Hall Colliery, was situated on the southern side of the village of

Kilnhurst Kilnhurst is a village in South Yorkshire, England, on the banks of the River Don and the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation. It grew up around the coal mining, ceramics, glass, brick-making and locomotive industries; none of these in ...

, near

Rotherham Rotherham () is a large minster and market town in South Yorkshire, England. The town takes its name from the River Rother which then merges with the River Don. The River Don then flows through the town centre. It is the main settlement of ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. I ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. The earliest colliery on the site, known as Thrybergh or Thrybergh Hall Colliery, worked the

Barnsley seam The coal seams worked in the South Yorkshire Coalfield lie mainly in the middle coal measures within what is now formally referred to as the Pennine Coal Measures Group. These are a series of mudstones, shales, sandstones, and coal seams laid d ...

from 1858, and was the site of a serious accident in 1863.accident in 1863
/ref> The brickworks, along with the local pottery, was served by a branch of the

South Yorkshire Railway The South Yorkshire Railway was a railway company with lines in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Initially promoted as the South Yorkshire Coal Railway in 1845, the railway was enabled by an act of 1847 as the South Yorkshire Doncaster and ...

from 1850, this becoming a through line linking Sheffield and Doncaster from 1864. From its sinking this line also served the colliery. The railway junction from the main line was known as Thrybergh Colliery Junction until the early days of the 20th century when the line to Thrybergh (

Silverwood Colliery Silverwood Colliery was a colliery situated between Thrybergh and Ravenfield in Yorkshire, England. Originally called Dalton Main, it was renamed after a local woodland. It was owned by Dalton Main Collieries Ltd. History Dalton Main Collier ...

) was opened and the old signal box replaced. The colliery was connected underground with two other mining operations, Warren Vale Colliery and Warren House Colliery. A standard gauge railway line connected Kilnhurst Colliery to Warren Vale, a continuance of the line which served Kilnhurst brickworks. Through its lifetime the colliery had three owners. First came Wakefield-based J. & J. Charlesworth who developed the workings with the opening of the Swallow Wood seam in 1917 and prepared the way for extraction from the Parkgate seam which came on stream in 1923, the year when Charlesworth’s were succeeded by Glasgow-based steel and coal company

Stewarts & Lloyds Stewarts & Lloyds was a steel tube manufacturer with its headquarters in Glasgow at 41 Oswald Street. The company was created in 1903 by the amalgamation of two of the largest iron and steel makers in Britain, A. & J. Stewart & Menzies, Coatbridg ...

Ltd. Under their ownership, in 1929, the Silkstone seam was opened up. Sheffield steelmakers and Clyde shipbuilders

John Brown & Company John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and the ''Queen Elizabeth 2''. At its height, from 1900 to the 1950s, it was one of ...

was a sub-lessee of Stewart and Lloyds and this continued following the sale to the Tinsley Park Colliery Company on 28 April 1936. The colliery was sold, included the adjoining brickworks and a house, for the sum of £310,000. The sinking of a new, No.4 shaft was undertaken between 1937 and 1939. Following the Second World War, in 1945, the colliery was in the ownership of the Manvers Main Colliery Company, based in Wath-upon-Dearne. From nationalisation the colliery came under the ownership of 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 "v ...

. With a rationalisation of outlets in the South Yorkshire coalfield Kilnhurst was merged into the South Manvers complex. The work, which took place between 1950 and 1956, saw the end of coal winding at Kilnhurst, all coal being transported underground to Manvers where it was drawn to the surface. The colliery closed in 1989. In the 1980s the lads used to sing and play mouth organs on the paddy mail. The songs were all made up about the characters who worked down the pit.

References

*"The Silverwood Branch" by Geoff Royston and Roger Milnes. "Forward", the journal of the Great Central Railway Society, No.84, November 1991. * Various issues of "Coal News", 1950 to 1956 : available on line. {{coord, 53, 28, 1, N, 1, 18, 18, W, type:landmark_region:GB_source:wikimapia, display=title 1989 disestablishments in England Coal mines in Rotherham Coal mines in South Yorkshire Underground mines in England