The Prince of Wales Colliery was a coal mine that operated for over 130 years in

Pontefract Pontefract is a historic market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, east of Wakefield and south of Castleford. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the towns in the City of Wake ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

, England. It was permanently closed in 2002 after geological problems were found to make accessing remaining coal reserves unprofitable, and most of the site was later converted for housing.

History

The colliery was developed from 1860, but coaling operations did not begin until 1869, with full production underway by 1872, when over was being brought to the surface per week. It was sometimes referred to as ''PoW'' or as the ''Ponty Prince'', Ponty being short for Pontefract, the town that it was in. In 1885, the underground viewer, general manager and the owner of the mine (Alderman Rhodes, the Mayor of Pontefract) were prosecuted for not ensuring that the pit was adequately ventilated. A regulation stipulated that the air sections should be a minimum of wide, but those at the PoW were only , and . The underground viewer and general manager were fined, with the mayor being told to ensure the safe working of his mine. In 1896, the mine was acquired by Lord Masham, who owned other collieries at

Featherstone Featherstone is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the City of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, two miles south-west of Pontefract. Historic counties of England, Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 2011 ...

. Throughout the 1890s, the mine was subject to strike action on two counts; firstly, the amount that miners were paid for producing coal from the

Silkstone Seam The coal seams worked in the South Yorkshire Coalfield lie mainly in the middle coal measures within what is now formally referred to as the Pennine Coal Measures Group. These are a series of mudstones, shales, sandstones, and coal seams laid do ...

, which they believed, should be on a par with other collieries producing coal from the same seam. Secondly, Rhodes had introduced a type of fork for moving the coal from the face into the tubs known as ''riddles'', which meant that smaller pieces of coal slipped through the tines and was less efficient as a shovel. As miners were paid by the amount they mined per shift, this led to another set of strike action. In the 1950s, the colliery was providing employment for over 2,000 men. In 1986, a year after the miners strike, the pit was producing over per week, which was above the average of per person on one shift. Despite the breaking of production records, overtime was not available and 400 miners at PoW were threatening to go on strike. In March 1979, Radio One

DJs A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile D ...

Simon Bates Simon Philip Bates (born 17 December 1946) is an English disc jockey and radio presenter. Between 1976 and 1993 he worked at BBC Radio 1, presenting the station's weekday mid-morning show for most of this period. He later became a regular pres ...

and

John Peel John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly fr ...

, broadcast a programme live from the colliery, with the first song requested being, appropriately enough,

Shaft Shaft may refer to: Rotating machine elements * Shaft (mechanical engineering), a rotating machine element used to transmit power * Line shaft, a power transmission system * Drive shaft, a shaft for transferring torque * Axle, a shaft around whi ...

. By 1981, the colliery working had been transformed from a deep mine, into a

drift mine Drift mining is either the mining of an ore deposit by underground methods, or the working of coal seams accessed by adits driven into the surface outcrop of the coal bed. A drift mine is an underground mine in which the entry or access is above ...

operation, and despite being in Pontefract, was listed as being in the NCBs North Yorkshire region. A drawdown of the number of pits in the 1990s, led to a suggestion that Prince of Wales Colliery should be merged with nearby

Kellingley Colliery Kellingley Colliery was a deep coal mine in North Yorkshire, England, east of Ferrybridge power station. It was owned and operated by UK Coal. The colliery closed on 18 December 2015, marking the end of deep-pit coal mining in Britain. The s ...

, with the output being brought to the surface in just one location. New houses for the Prince of Wales (geograph 5666230)

In 2001, geological problems with the mine were discovered which led to an investigation paid for by the Department of Trade and Industry. This revealed that the cost of extracting the remaining of coal was too expensive, and in January 2002,

UK Coal UK Coal Production Ltd, formerly UK Coal plc, was the largest coal mining business in the United Kingdom. The company was based in Harworth, in Nottinghamshire. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The successor company that con ...

announced the closure of the mine for later in the same year. The company had been trying to develop the ''Went Edge'' reserves, and the inability to do so, meant the writing off of some £15.8 million in its initial investment. After closure in August 2002, equipment recovery took two months. In 2013, the site was remediated and by 2018, almost 400 homes have been built on the site with planning permission for up to 900 homes. The remediation yielded over of coal, which was sent to power stations to generate electricity. There are plans to erect a steel memorial to the miners who worked at the colliery on the new housing estate built on the site. In 2014, Alkane developed a methane plant at the site which burns the gas drawn from underground to turn it into energy. The site is rated at 2 megawatts.

Incidents

*9 August 1876, a 17-year old worker was killed by a descending access cage when he stepped underneath it. The cage killed the victim instantly, described as having "his head frightfully crushed." *2 April 1998, an explosion of firedamp caused the evacuation of 141 workers.

Notable colliers

Jimmy Savile Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile (; 31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011) was an English DJ, television and radio personality who hosted BBC shows including ''Top of the Pops'' and ''Jim'll Fix It''. During his lifetime, he was well known ...

- worked as a

Bevin Boy Bevin Boys were young British men Conscription in the United Kingdom, conscripted to work in coal mines between December 1943 and March 1948, to increase the rate of coal production, which had declined through the early years of World War II ...

in the colliery during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

References

External links

Aerial image of the colliery from 1933Layout of housing and industrial estate built on the colliery site
{{Coal mining in Yorkshire 1870 establishments in England 2002 disestablishments in England Coal mines in West Yorkshire Mining in West Yorkshire Underground mines in England Pontefract