Thurcroft Colliery was a coal mine situated in the village of

Thurcroft Thurcroft is a village and civil parish situated south-east of Rotherham in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. From 1902 to 1991, it was a mining community. It has a population of 5,296, increasing to 6,900 at ...

, near

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 ...

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. In 1902, the Rother Vale Colliery Company leased the rights to work coal from below the Thurcroft Estates which were owned by Messrs. Marrian (of Sharrow Hall, Sheffield) and Binns, but it was not until 7 years later that they began sinking a shaft. Problems were encountered within a year when they found water which needed to be pumped from the workings and caused a delay in reaching the coal seam. 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 ...

, which is of good quality coal had been thrown out of its normal alignment and its expected position by a

geological fault Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

which was not discovered until the shaft was sunk. Delays meant that no coal was produced until 1913. From 1913, the company began to build housing for the miners, designed by Rotherham architect James Knight. The colliery was nationalized in 1947, becoming part 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 "ve ...

. It was closed on 6 December 1991.

References

* Details from Rother Vale Colliery Co., paperwork. {{coord, 53.4019, -1.2499, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title 1909 establishments in England 1991 disestablishments in England Coal mines in Rotherham Coal mines in South Yorkshire Underground mines in England Thurcroft