Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
This is the site of the entrance to the old South Kirkby
Colliery site, soon (at some point to be) South Kirkby Industrial
Estate.
Originally Cache (600ml lock tub) contained:
Diomede Travel Bug (TB4090H)
Several items of swag
Log book
Pencil and Pencil sharpener
South Kirkby Colliery was the first deep mine to be sunk in
the area and had a life of 107 years before finally being put to
rest in 1988.
Following the completion of the Wakefield-Doncaster railway
line in 1866, the Allot family, which owned over half the land in
the South Kirkby parish, leased a considerable amount to the
Ferryhill and Rosedale Iron Company for the purpose of opening a
mine.
The main target was the Barnsley seam, which was known to be the
finest steam raising coal in Yorkshire. When sinking started in
1876, several seams of workable coal were ignored as they went for
the prize, reaching the Barnsley Seam at a depth of 635 yards in
August, 1878.
Two shafts, 150 yards apart and 15ft each in diameter, were lined
with iron tubing because of a water problem, and were later made
deeper to reach the Haigh Moor Seam at a depth of 725 yards. This
made South Kirkby the deepest pit in Yorkshire and one of the three
deepest in the country.
Unfortunately, the owners ran out of cash and, with increasing
liabilities, stopped all work in 1879, also causing a halt to the
building of houses for the potential miners.
A new limited company, with Mr. John Shaw, of Darrington Hall as
chairman, took over in 1880, and work progressed swiftly, opening
out both the Barnsley Bed and the Haigh Moor Seams.
A colliery screening plant was installed and miles of railway
sidings to link the colliery with the rail network.
The South Kirkby Colliery Company was granted a' carriage account
for the conveyance of minerals to areas served by the Great North
Railway Company~ and it began to become a major supplier of coal to
a variety of industries all over the North and beyond.
The Beamshaw Seam was also developed and, in 1958, a third shaft
was sunk at the pit to allow further development of coal in places
like the Newhill Seam.
At its peak, South Kirkby employed almost 3,000 men, and in the 605
and 705 produced over one million tons of coal in a financial year
to earn the nickname 'Big SK'.
Some of the seams by-passed initially were worked by the creation
of the Ferrymoor-Riddings Drift Mine, which opened in the
70’s, and used retreat mining. They were united into a
complex with a washery, although the workforce had dropped to
around 1,100 by the time of the miners' strike in 1984.
Although there was a confidence among the men that it could
continue as a viable proposition, South Kirkby received the thumbs
down four years later and was demolished.