Brodsworth Colliery was a coal mine north west of Doncaster and west of the Great North Road. in South Yorkshire, England. Two shafts were sunk between October 1905 and 1907 in a joint venture by the Hickleton Main Colliery Company and the Staveley Coal and Iron Company. [1]
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The colliery exploited the coal seams of the South Yorkshire Coalfield including the Barnsley seam which was reached at a depth of 595 yards and was up to 9 feet thick. [2] After a third shaft was sunk in 1923, [3] Brodsworth, the largest colliery in Yorkshire, had the highest output of a three-shaft colliery in Britain. [1]
The colliery and five others were merged into Doncaster Amalgamated Collieries [4] in 1937 and the National Coal Board in 1947. [5] It closed in 1990. [2]
The colliery was consistently amongst those that employed the most miners in Britain, employing around 2,800 workers throughout the 1980s.
The company built Woodlands, a model village for its workers. [6] Since the colliery closed, its spoil tip has been restored and developed as a community woodland; owned by the Land Restoration Trust and controlled by the Forestry Commission. Some of the colliery site has been sufficiently remediated to allow houses to be built upon it. [7]
