Waleswood Colliery was a coal mine situated between

Swallownest Swallownest is a village in the civil parish of Aston cum Aughton and the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. The village is south of Rotherham and from Sheffield. Swallownest borders the Sheffield suburb of Woodhouse ...

and Wales Bar, 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 and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The colliery was adjacent to the Rotherham to Clowne road and the main line of 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 ...

about 2 miles east of Woodhouse. The first shaft was sunk in the 1860s when the colliery was owned by Skinner and Holford Limited. In 1947 the colliery and its associated by-product plant 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 "v ...

, the colliery being closed the following year. As the collieries in the area became inter-connected it was retained as a pumping station. The coke ovens and by-products plant closed in 1962. Many of the colliery buildings have been retained and now form the basis of an industrial estate.

Locomotives

During its lifetime the colliery had four steam locomotives, never more than two at any one time. * The first locomotive, a

Yorkshire Engine Company The Yorkshire Engine Company (YEC) was a small independent locomotive manufacturer in Sheffield, England. The company was formed in 1865 and produced locomotives and carried out general engineering work until 1965. It mainly built shunting engi ...

0-4-0 Saddle Tank built in 1878, Works No. 323, carried the name "Waleswood", and was sold to

Thos. W. Ward Thos. W. Ward Ltd was a Sheffield, Yorkshire, steel, engineering and cement business, which began as coal and coke merchants. It expanded into recycling metal for Sheffield's steel industry, and then the supply and manufacture of machinery. I ...

in 1902.

* There is no record of any further locomotives being bought until 1906 when the company bought another 0-4-0ST from Hudswell Clarke & Company (Works No.750). The "Waleswood" name plates were removed from the original locomotive when it was sold and these were attached to the saddle tanks of this locomotive. The locomotive was rebuilt by the original builders in the early 1930s. It was moved to

Kiveton Park Colliery Kiveton Park Colliery was a coal mine in the village of Kiveton Park, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. History Until 1845, Kiveton was a rural village, where the main work was in agriculture. In that year, a railway line was built ...

in 1962, preserved in 1972 and moved to

Staveley Staveley may refer to: Places * Staveley, Cumbria, village in the former county of Westmorland and now in Cumbria, England ** Staveley railway station * Staveley-in-Cartmel, village formerly in Lancashire, now in Cumbria, England * Staveley, D ...

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. It was later moved to the, now closed, Steamport Railway Museum at Southport. Since 1990 it has been at the

Battlefield Line Railway The Battlefield Line Railway is a heritage railway in Leicestershire, England.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : It runs from Shackerstone (Grid ref ) to Shenton (), via Market Bosworth, a total of . Shenton is near Bosw ...

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where it is being restored to working order. Waleswood's restoration at Shackerstone halted due to unfortunate circumstances and it spent decades in the rain and elements in storage both at Shackerstone and Statfold Barn. In 2016 it changed ownership and was moved to the Northamptonsie Ironstone Railway at Hunsbury Hill where it is undergoing a full restorative rebuild. It was planned to return to steam during 2017 but the boiler required a much more extensive overhaul than was first thought. The mostly new boiler is due back in the frames around Easter 2019 with steaming planned for early summer. * The third locomotive arrived just two years afterwards, again from

Hudswell Clarke Hudswell, Clarke and Company Limited was an engineering and locomotive building company in Jack Lane, Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. History The company was founded as Hudswell and Clarke in 1860. In 1870 the name was changed to Hu ...

& Company, Works No. 829 * The fourth, and last, locomotive came from Sir Lindsay Parkinson & Company. Again it was a product of Hudswell Clarke, Works No. 1636, built in 1929 and carried the name "Jennie".

References

* *

External links

Kiveton Park and Wales History Society
Coal mines in Rotherham Former mines in England Underground mines in England Former coal mines {{mining-stub