Suprising bungalow - November 2010

[robbie1003]

good photos of a place where iv passed so many times. keep saying we must investigate the place.

 

[nelly]

nice find, any idea on what the leather aprons and underground machinery were used for??

Have you ever seen Hostel????

 

[Vickyvlr]

How enchanting....... i bet this place was thriving with life once upon a time ago......

 

[klempner69]

Many thanks for sharing this,that looks like a Parkray 88 in one shot.

 

[Dirus_Strictus]

Presumably if this property was owned by Bram Pashley then this is his second mine, the drift mine at Newmillerdam - opened up when compulsory land purchase for the M1 extension closed his original shaft in 1967.

From some of the comments in this thread I can see that nobody is old enough to remember the 'good old coalman' - the Clean Air Act removed some very colourful characters from our streets. The photographs indicate that this property obviously belonged to a coalman at some time in the past, the 'shed' with its large hopper was obviously used to fill the 1cwt bags with coal. The leather 'apron' with its attendant studded leather back protector was standard wear for all coalmen, and easily recognisable to any 'towny' of my age! You try handling 1cwt bags of coal all day for a living without wearing that piece of kit! Did Mr Pashley also sell his coal by the legally weighed 1cwt bag, or if this property was not owned by him which local coalman did own it?

Stables were another necessary part of the coalman's property for many years, even in the late forties/early fifties many a ton of coal was delivered by horse drawn dray. I know of one instance where smokeless fuel deliveries took the place of the traditional coal and allowed the business to continue well into the nineties, the dray horses in the stables being replaced by the grand daughter's prize show jumpers!

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the flat roofed brick 'workshop' originally had nothing to do with the cottage and other buildings on this site. It looks like it could have been a pump-house or something similar - one really needs to look at the 1930/1940 maps for the area and see if some Utility built the structure.

 

[nij4829]

Presumably if this property was owned by Bram Pashley then this is his second mine, the drift mine at Newmillerdam - opened up when compulsory land purchase for the M1 extension closed his original shaft in 1967.

From some of the comments in this thread I can see that nobody is old enough to remember the 'good old coalman' - the Clean Air Act removed some very colourful characters from our streets. The photographs indicate that this property obviously belonged to a coalman at some time in the past, the 'shed' with its large hopper was obviously used to fill the 1cwt bags with coal. The leather 'apron' with its attendant studded leather back protector was standard wear for all coalmen, and easily recognisable to any 'towny' of my age! You try handling 1cwt bags of coal all day for a living without wearing that piece of kit! Did Mr Pashley also sell his coal by the legally weighed 1cwt bag, or if this property was not owned by him which local coalman did own it?

Stables were another necessary part of the coalman's property for many years, even in the late forties/early fifties many a ton of coal was delivered by horse drawn dray. I know of one instance where smokeless fuel deliveries took the place of the traditional coal and allowed the business to continue well into the nineties, the dray horses in the stables being replaced by the grand daughter's prize show jumpers!

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the flat roofed brick 'workshop' originally had nothing to do with the cottage and other buildings on this site. It looks like it could have been a pump-house or something similar - one really needs to look at the 1930/1940 maps for the area and see if some Utility built the structure.

I have scoured for arial shots from the 30/40's but nothing seams to be available, all i have are maps from the 20's but they show nothing.

 

[rikj]

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the flat roofed brick 'workshop' originally had nothing to do with the cottage and other buildings on this site. It looks like it could have been a pump-house or something similar - one really needs to look at the 1930/1940 maps for the area and see if some Utility built the structure.

A quick timeline of the site:

1854 - coal pit marked in adjacent field
1893 - shaft marked on site
1906 - pumping shaft marked on site, also another shaft
1932 - pumping shaft marked on site, also another shaft
1955 - pumping shaft marked on site, also another shaft
1961 - no shafts marked.

Quick stab at the story would be, started off as a small pit sometime between 1854 and 1893 with one or two shafts. At some point between 1893 and 1906 one of the shafts became a pumping shaft. I'd guess this was for one of the larger collieries that were within spitting distance. Why sink a shaft when there's one already there that can be bought or leased?

That it's marked on maps for the next 50 years hints that it was serving a much larger enterprise than a single mine. If it was a colliery pumping shaft then the only mystery would be, where did they pump the water to? Nearest watercourse is a tributary of Flockton Beck about 500 yds to the east. Flockton Beck itself is a similar distance to the south. Anyway, just a theory.

The whole area still has active pumping going on to cope with the South Yorks coalfield minewater rebound. The nice ochre coloured sludge ponds at Caphouse are clearly visible on google earth.

 

[nij4829]

Thank you for that mate, may I ask where you got your info?

 

[rikj]

may I ask where you got your info?

Sorry, should have said, this is just what is marked on OS maps for the dates listed. And of course maps are just the surveyor's interpretation of surface features.

Also, OS maps often suffer from what's know as the SALT Principle. Same As Last Time. Features that have long since vanished keep being repeated on new maps just because they were on the old ones.