Elsecar New Colliery Barnsley · South Yorkshire · England

Coal mining in Elsecar began around 1750 when Richard Bingley started the first colliery, Elsecar Old Colliery, at a depth of around 15 metres to exploit the Barnsley Bed. By 1752 the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham had taken over the colliery and by 1757 it comprised eight pits in and around Elsecar Green, worked using horse-powered gins. From 1750 until around 1795 the pits employed approximately nine men. Following the death of the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham in 1782, his estates were inherited by his cousin, the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam. The 4th Earl expanded Elsecar Old Colliery, adding steam winding engines in 1796; by 1848 the pit employed 87 men and boys and was renamed Elsecar High Colliery. It closed when its reserves were exhausted in 1888.

Elsecar New Colliery, the first deep colliery in the village, was sunk around 1794–5 to the south of the existing Elsecar Workshops. The sinking was undertaken to allow the Fitzwilliams to expand coal production and exploit the new transport opportunities presented by the Elsecar branch of the Dearne and Dove Canal, which received parliamentary approval in 1793 and reached Elsecar by 1799. The colliery had three shafts: two coal-winding shafts and one pumping shaft. The shafts reached the Barnsley seam at a depth of 120 feet. A Newcomen-type atmospheric beam engine, known as the Great Engine, was installed in 1795 to pump water from the colliery and allow the extraction of coal from deeper seams. The engine ran from 1795 to 1923 when it was replaced by electric pumps installed by the South Yorkshire Pumping Association. A second pumping engine was added in 1823 when the shafts were deepened to reach the Parkgate seam. The colliery was expanded in 1837 with the addition of a new shaft at Jump known as the Jump Pit, connected to the canal by an inclined plane in 1836 with infrastructure supplied by the Milton Ironworks. In 1808 the workforce numbered 95 men and boys. A 1796 ledger, the earliest known record of operations at the colliery, shows it made a clear profit of £975 that year. In 1928 Henry Ford visited Elsecar and attempted to purchase the Newcomen engine to take it to his museum in America; his request was refused by Earl Fitzwilliam.

Elsecar Mid Colliery, which by 1848 employed 121 men and boys, was abandoned in the mid-1850s as Simon Wood Colliery started production. Simon Wood Colliery was sunk in 1853 to a depth of 85 metres to the Barnsley seam and had three shafts. It was equipped with a steam-powered ventilating fan invented by Benjamin Biram, the Fitzwilliams' superintendent of mines. Simon Wood closed in 1903.

Elsecar Main Colliery, the last and deepest pit in the Elsecar complex, was sunk by the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam starting in July 1905 to work the Parkgate seam with a take covering 2,880 acres. No. 1 shaft was 16 feet in diameter and reached the Parkgate coal at 344 yards. No. 2 shaft was 18 feet in diameter and 400 yards to the sump bottom. Both shafts were brick-lined and had Bradley and Craven winding engines. The colliery generated its own electricity using steam from ten Lancashire boilers. The boilerhouse had a 184-foot chimney. Coal extraction proper began between 1905 and 1908. By 1923 the colliery employed 2,400 workers, 2,000 underground and 400 on the surface. The Parkgate seam became exhausted in 1942–43 and in 1924–25 the colliery was deepened to 534 yards to access the Silkstone seam. Seams worked over the colliery's lifetime included the Parkgate, Silkstone, Thorncliffe, Swallow Wood (Haigh Moor), Lidgett, and Kents Thick. The colliery's output was 1.3 million tons in 1967. Pit head baths were built in 1938 when 1,500 men were employed. King George V visited and went underground at Elsecar Main on 9 July 1912. The Fitzwilliam era ended in 1947 when the colliery was nationalised. Elsecar Main Colliery closed in October 1983 and the surface plant was demolished by 1985.

The Newcomen engine at Elsecar New Colliery became a Scheduled Ancient Monument in 1972 or 1973 (the monument number is SY1146). Following major conservation work funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (£425,000) and English Heritage (£60,000), the engine was restored to working order by 2014. It now operates using a hydraulic ram, allowing the beam, cylinder piston, and pump rods to be worked without the need to replace large amounts of historic ironwork. The engine is understood to be the oldest steam engine in the world still in its original building and over its original mine shaft. The scheduled monument has since been extended to include important remains of the associated colliery pithead that were revealed by excavation. Elsecar Heritage Centre, which now occupies the former New Yard colliery workshops built for Earl Fitzwilliam in 1850, is operated by Barnsley Museums and is open to visitors; the Newcomen engine compound is open every day except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year's Day, with guided tours operating between Easter and October each year.