Treeton Colliery was a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

situated in the village of

Treeton Treeton is a village and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. It is located about south of the town of Rotherham and east of Sheffield City Centre. History There is evidence of Mesolithic and N ...

, near

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 ...

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. Work on the sinking of Treeton Colliery commenced, with all due ceremony, in October 1875. Trade, at the time, was in a poor state and the company was short of capital so work was suspended three years later not being resumed until March, 1882. The colliery was owned by the Rother Vale Collieries Limited which was founded in the same year, bringing together the new workings with collieries at Fence and Orgreave. This 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 ...

Limited following the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. From its beginnings until 1965 Treeton worked the

Barnsley 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 ...

and the High Hazels seam until the following year. After nationalisation it was decided to increase the output of the Wathwood seam and to reopen the Swallow Wood seam which had fallen into disuse in 1947. This came on stream in 1972 and lasted until the colliery closed on 7 December 1990. These two seams produced house coal.

Rail connections

The colliery was situated adjacent to the

North Midland Railway The North Midland Railway was a British railway company, which opened its line from Derby to Rotherham (Masbrough) and Leeds in 1840. At Derby, it connected with the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway and the Midland Counties Railway at wha ...

line at

and connected with this. It was also connected to the

Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) was formed in 1847 when the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway joined with authorised but unbuilt railway companies, forming a proposed network from Manchester to Grimsb ...

by a branch line which passed via Orgreave Colliery. Until May 1932 when storms caused parts of three bridges on the branch to be washed away the colliery was served by a

Paddy Mail Paddy mails, generally considered as being workmen's trains, were operated by, or for many companies to transport their workers to their place of work or between their sites of work. Originally they were operated by railway contractors, on temp ...

which operated at shift change times from Sheffield Victoria and

Darnall Darnall is a suburb of eastern Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Darnall is approximately east-north-east of Sheffield city centre. History Darnall was initially a small hamlet usually included with Attercliffe. William Walker, a resident ...

to serve both Orgreave and Treeton. This train was involved in an

accident An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researche ...

in 1927.

References

* Paperwork of the Rother Vale Colliery Co., * "Coal News", newspaper of the National Coal Board. {{Coord, 53.385, -1.345, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Coal mines in Rotherham Coal mines in South Yorkshire Treeton