First pit in the Sheffield area

[Texas]

Been reading a book about a house on the Thames, its history and the people who lived in and around it. There's a chapter which mentions the coal trade in the 16-17 hundreds, and it made me think. Where was the first pit in the Sheffield area?

[Vasquez Rich]

I don't know but some of my ancestors made charcoal in Handsworth in the late 1700s... so maybe Handsworth/Woodhouse area? The first diggings will have been surface outcroppings anyway, if you mean the first deep shaft then could be one of the large ones.

 

Richard

[Alastair]

I doubt it's even recorded when the first coal was dug in Sheffield. There would have been surface diggings going back thousands of years.

[Texas]

Just to tidy things up a little, I suppose I was thinking in deep mining terms, but I suppose the first recovery of coal must've been drift diggings. In the book I mentioned it speaks of sea coal shipped from the Newcastle area in the 13th century.

[Greybeard]

Cambridge street was known as Coal Pit lane in 1736 so presumably there were coal workings there a good few years before that date.

 

The Romans were definitley using coal in the north east of England and probably in most places where the outcroppings were obvious.

[alex3659]

birley west was sunk and producing coal in 1852,

another one of the oldest kiveton sunk in 1866.

owned by sheffield coal company , they had previously mined in the park area of sheffield in 1805 leaseing the rights off the duke of norfolk. the deep shaft mines were not until 47 years after .

birley west is shirebrook valley in between hackenthorpe and woodhouse , my grandfather worked there and i can remember the coal trains going past thier house on coisley road.