Orgreave is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

on the River Rother in South Yorkshire. It is in 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, ...

, about east of the centre of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

and a similar distance south of the centre 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 2011 Census recorded its population as 739. This is a slight decline since the 2001 Census, which recorded its population as 761.

History

Coal and coke

Two halls stood at Orgreave, Orgreave Hall, built in 1684 was occupied by John Sorsby of John Sorby & Sons. Rotherwood Hall was later occupied by his son Richard Sorsby (1806-1862), coal producer. The halls were demolished in the 1990s. Coal mining in the area began with Dore House Colliery in 1820. The first shaft of Orgreave Colliery was sunk in 1851. In the 20th century the Orgreave Coking Plant was established, and the colliery began to supply the plant. 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 ...

closed Orgreave Colliery in 1981. In the 1984–85 Miners' Strike, National Union of Mineworkers members picketed the

coking plant Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ...

to prevent employees and coal from entering or products from leaving. On 18 June 1984, three and a half months into the strike, a large number of

South Yorkshire Police South Yorkshire Police (SYP) is the territorial police force responsible for policing South Yorkshire in England. The force is led by Chief Constable Lauren Poultney. Oversight is conducted by Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings. T ...

officers, including

mounted Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, Co ...

units, were deployed against the pickets. There was large-scale violence between police and pickets, which became known as the

Battle of Orgreave The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant a ...

. The coking plant closed in 1991. In 1995, British Coal Opencast was authorised to remove the

spoil tip A spoil tip (also called a boney pile, culm bank, gob pile, waste tip or bing) is a pile built of accumulated ''spoil'' – waste material removed during mining. These waste materials are typically composed of shale, as well as smaller quant ...

of the former colliery and conduct

opencast Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

coal mining on a site totalling . BCO removed some 12 million tonnes of spoil, extracted coal from it, and also realigned almost of the River Rother. In 2005 BCO completed its work at Orgreave and handed over the land for redevelopment.

Redevelopment

of the site has been redeveloped as the

Advanced Manufacturing Park The Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) is a manufacturing technology park in Waverley, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund, and developed by thHarworth Group previously the prop ...

. In 2008, Harworth Estates submitted a planning application to redevelop as the Waverley community, which will include 4,000 homes and some commercial development. is being restored as green space including recreation areas, parks, woods, three lakes and a reservoir. Between 2012 and 2016, housebuilder's Taylor Wimpey, Harron Homes and Barratt Homes delivered the first 500 homes on the site. In 2017, Avant became the fourth housebuilder on site, purchasing two plots of land to build a total of 281 homes, and in the same year, Taylor Wimpey purchased further land to build another 130 new homes. In 2019 Harworth sold the latest residential phase to Barratt Homes to build 177 new homes. Waverley Junior Academy, located within the redeveloped area, is operated by Aston Community Education Trust. At the same time further land reclamation activities had increased the size of the Advanced Manufacturing Park to .

References

External links

* * Civil parishes in South Yorkshire Geography of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham Villages in South Yorkshire {{SouthYorkshire-geo-stub