Rother Vale Collieries were a group of coal producing pits originally in the Rother Valley parishes of

Treeton Treeton is a village and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. It is located about south of the town of Rotherham and east of Sheffield City Centre. History There is evidence of Mesolithic and Ne ...

, Woodhouse and Orgreave, nowadays on the south east

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

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 ...

boundary, in

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 England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. In the early 20th century a new colliery at Thurcroft was developed. The Fence Colliery Company was formed in 1862 with the purchase of Fence Colliery, a small coal pit sunk alongside the main Sheffield to Worksop road at the lower end of the village of

Fence A fence is a structure that encloses an area, typically outdoors, and is usually constructed from posts that are connected by boards, wire, rails or net (textile), netting. A fence differs from a wall in not having a solid foundation along its ...

. This pit had already been in operation for over 20 years and under new ownership was considerably developed. It closed as a coal producing unit in 1904, coal from its reserves being brought to the surface at Orgreave, but it was retained as a pumping station and later became 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 ...

's workshops, finally closing in the 1990s. Orgreave Colliery - geograph

Orgreave Colliery Orgreave Colliery was a coal mine situated adjacent to the main line of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway about east of Sheffield and south west of Rotherham. The colliery is within the parish of Orgreave, from which it takes ...

, then a small concern, was bought by the company in 1870. It was situated less than a mile from Fence, adjacent to the main line of the

Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) was formed in 1847 when the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway joined with authorised but unbuilt railway companies, forming a proposed network from Manchester to Grims ...

, to the west of Woodhouse. It was joined to this railway by a steeply graded but short branch line. Five years after the purchase of Orgreave colliery the company changed its name and became Rother Vale Collieries Limited extending its empire just two years on with the sinking of a new pit at

. A railway branch was constructed by well-known contractors

Logan and Hemingway Logan and Hemingway was a firm of British civil engineering contractors. The firm was an awarded a number of contracts by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and its successor the Great Central Railway, including expansion of the co ...

between Orgreave and Treeton to link the collieries to the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 in rail transport, 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had ...

at Treeton. In order to gain a foothold in the traffic at Treeton the M.S.& L.R. gained authorisation for a branch line, unusually, under its "Extension to London" Act, 1893. This opened for traffic, including the

Paddy Mail Paddy mails were workmen's trains operated by companies in Britain to transport workers from their "shanty villages" to their place of work or between the work sites. Originally they were operated by railway contractors on temporary tracks laid ...

, on 10 October 1898. Moving further eastwards the Rother Vale Colliery Company began the sinking of a new colliery at Thurcroft in 1909. Although 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 do ...

was reached in 1913 extraction became difficult. The point of sinking was situated over a large geological fault which had thrown the coal out of its normal position. In 1918 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 ...

was formed and the following year, along with steel making interests in

and

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (), abbreviated ''Lincs'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to th ...

, Rother Vale Collieries became part of the group.

Sources

*Various Issues : Steel News, the newspaper of the United Steel Companies Limited. *Great Central, Vol. 3. "Fay sets the pace", George Dow, Locomotive Publishing Co., London 1969 {{coord, 53.367, -1.356, display=title, region:GB_scale:50000 Coal mines in Rotherham Coal mines in South Yorkshire Coal mines in Sheffield