Brookhouse Colliery was a coal mine within the

Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham The Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham is a metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. It is named after its largest town, Rotherham, but also spans the outlying towns of Maltby, South Yorkshire, Maltby, Swinton, South Yorkshire, Swinton, ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and metropolitan county, metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of City of Doncaster, Doncaster and City of Sh ...

, England. It was operational between 1929 and 1985. To develop coal seams in the area, the

Sheffield Coal Company The Sheffield Coal Company was a colliery owning and coal selling company with its head office situated in South Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Formation The Sheffield Coal Company was one of the oldest colliery companies in Sh ...

opened a new colliery between Swallownest and Beighton, at that time on the borders of Rotherham Rural District and

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

but now just within the borough of

Rotherham Rotherham () is a large minster and market town in South Yorkshire, England. The town takes its name from the River Rother which then merges with the River Don. The River Don then flows through the town centre. It is the main settlement of ...

. The company, which became part of 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 ...

in 1937, already owned other collieries in the area, particularly the

Birley Collieries The Birley Collieries were a group of coal mines set in the Shire Brook Valley in south-east Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. They were connected to the railway system by a branch line from the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway ...

and that at Aston Common, known as

North Staveley Colliery Aston Colliery was a small coal mine sunk on Aston Common, within Rotherham Rural District but six miles east of Sheffield in the 1840s. In 1864 its workings were taken over and developed by the North Staveley Colliery Company, part of the Stavel ...

. Brookhouse was not opened until 1929 and linked with its neighbours underground. The site also included coke ovens and by-products plants supplying metallurgical coke to the iron and steel industry, particularly those in

Scunthorpe Scunthorpe () is an industrial town and unparished area in the unitary authority of North Lincolnshire in Lincolnshire, England of which it is the main administrative centre. Scunthorpe had an estimated total population of 82,334 in 2016. A ...

. The colliery passed to 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 ...

on nationalisation in 1947 and was closed in 1985. After closure the site became part of a long-held plan by Rotherham Borough Council, Sheffield City Council and North East Derbyshire District Council to create the northern extension to the

Rother Valley Country Park The Rother Valley Country Park is a country park in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, close to Rotherham's border with Sheffield and Derbyshire. It covers 3 square kilometres (740 acres), has four artificial lakes, recre ...

. The first part of the plan, the southern part of which was commenced in 1976, was to extract coal by opencasting from the area before commencement of landscaping.

References

*''East of Sheffield'' by Roger Milnes. "Forward" - The journal of the Great Central Railway Society, No.16, July 1984. (This article also uses unpublished material researched for "East of Sheffield" from various sources including members of the Kiveton and Wales Local History Group). *Official Company Handbook of the United Steel Companies. {{coord, 53, 21, 13, N, 1, 19, 10, W, display=title, type:landmark_region:GB Coal mines in Rotherham Coal mines in South Yorkshire Underground mines in England