1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I caught a fish alive!
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Sit and rest a while, watch the fishermen (muggles)
One, two, three, four, five.
Once I caught a fish alive,
Six, seven, eight, nine ,ten,
Then I let it go again.
Why did you let it go?
Because it bit my finger so.
Which finger did it bite?
This little finger on the right.
Watchout for muggles (AKA Fishermen)
This site was a former pit site and now has a series of paths at varies levels of difficulty.
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.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gur orapu