Yorkshire Coalfield Research Articles

Neighbourhood Change, Deprivation, Peripherality, and Ageing in the Yorkshire Coalfield

Low‐income neighbourhoods in contemporary England continue to be buffeted by roiling economic inequalities and social policy absences. Long‐term residents have a unique perspective on this socio‐spatial stress. This article zooms in to examine the condition of one spatial manifestation of these broader forces: peripheral council/public housing estates in the deindustrialised North of England—in this case the ex‐coalfields of West Yorkshire. Neighbourhood conditions are seen through the eyes of residents aged between 60 and 85 years. The article explores their accounts of the local economic, social, and political changes which have interlaced their experiences of work, community, and place over six decades. It also examines how irregular regeneration projects, emergency initiatives and local organising have tried to address and ameliorate structural marginalisation in recent years, not least during the Covid pandemic. The article provides a historically contingent account of contemporary socio‐spatial stress, one that emphasises the significance of long‐term residence and feelings of not only loss and nostalgia, but hopeful and resilient attachments to place.

Adam Smith revisited: the relationship between the English woollen manufacture and the availability of coal before the use of steam power

AbstractThe timing of textile de-industrialisation in eastern, southern, and western England and the concomitant shift of the woollen manufacture to the West Riding of Yorkshire is examined in temporal detail. The study shows that the manufacture was moving to settlements with cheap coal, low cost of living and running water as early as the sixteenth century. These settlements became key woollen manufacture centres and remained so until the nineteenth century. The industry was located on the West Riding of Yorkshire coal field long before the industrial revolution and the demand for coal to generate steam power.

‘Rethinking camaraderie as emotional practices: deindustrialisation and deskilling in South Yorkshire coalfields, 1980s-2000s’

ABSTRACT Historical and sociological scholarship on the British coalfields has been driven by a sustained interest in community and class. Consequently, however, a focus on community can subsume camaraderie/comradeship as a category of historical analysis and its potential value as a framework for understanding change and continuity in practice, experience, and identity. Drawing on methodological tools from the history of emotions, and oral history interviews with ex-miners, this article employs the concept of ‘emotional practices’ to define camaraderie as a learnt, embodied, and affective workplace practice. Arising out of class processes, camaraderie constituted a workplace skill, important in communicating and mobilising ways of feeling and being, which oscillated between integration and alienation, alleviating and aggravating work experiences. It argues men’s lamentations over the loss of camaraderie should be understood as a profound emotional experience of deskilling, affecting how workers navigated and negotiated work and workplace transitions, and communicated with their co-workers and to themselves who they are. By integrating the history of work and the history of emotions into an analysis of camaraderie, it offers a contribution on the lasting effects of deindustrialisation on the body, experience, and identity, and towards a new way of conceptualising camaraderie as ‘emotional practices’.

Protest, Paternalism and Living Standards in the Yorkshire Coalfield 1786–1801

This article offers a new perspective on why workers protested in the Industrial Revolution. It charts how protest action, specifically trade union coordinated strikes, took place to maintain or improve Yorkshire colliers’ living standards amid fluctuating food costs between 1786 and 1801. The article also illuminates how some paternalistic coalowners avoided disturbances — such as riots — by paying high wages and, more importantly, providing food to their employees free of charge at the worst times of dearth in 1795 and 1800.

Exploring the Links between Post-Industrial Landscape History and Ecology through Participatory Methods.

There is increasing recognition of the importance for local biodiversity of post-mining sites, many of which lie near communities that have suffered significant social and economic deprivation as the result of mine closures. However, no studies to date have actively used the knowledge of local communities to relate the history and treatment of post-mining sites to their current ecological status. We report a study of two post-mining sites in the Yorkshire coalfield of the UK in which the local community were involved in developing site histories and assessing plant and invertebrate species composition. Site histories developed using participatory GIS revealed that the sites had a mixture of areas of spontaneous succession and technical reclamation, and identified that both planned management interventions and informal activities influenced habitat heterogeneity and ecological diversity. Two groups of informal activity were identified as being of particular importance. Firstly, there has been active protection by the community of flower-rich habitats of conservation value (e.g. calcareous grassland) and distinctive plant species (e.g. orchids) which has also provided important foraging resources for butterfly and bumblebee species. Secondly, disturbance by activities such as use of motorbikes, informal camping, and cutting of trees and shrubs for fuel, as well as planned management interventions such as spreading of brick rubble, has provided habitat for plant species of open waste ground and locally uncommon invertebrate species which require patches of bare ground. This study demonstrates the importance of informal, and often unrecorded, activities by the local community in providing diverse habitats and increased biodiversity within a post-mining site, and shows that active engagement with the local community and use of local knowledge can enhance ecological interpretation of such sites and provide a stronger basis for successful future management.

Approaches to inform redevelopment of brownfield sites: An example from the Leeds area of the West Yorkshire coalfield, UK

Government-led regeneration schemes and policies encouraging the use of brownfield land present a challenge, particularly in coalfield areas. Coalfields have typically experienced multiple phases of development and can be susceptible to a suite of problematic ground conditions that may be rooted in the near-surface geology or result from anthropogenic activity. Such problems, related to the nature of void backfill, undermined and unstable ground and the presence of contaminated land in the near-surface, may deter investment in the very areas earmarked for redevelopment. An understanding of previous developments within coalfields is required to identify potential geological hazards, so that regeneration proposals include measures that address these issues. Public records of landfill and site investigations, and minerals exploration including opencast mine plans can reveal the distribution, thickness and high-level descriptions of fill materials, although the coverage of data typically precludes a comprehensive analysis of entire cities. The best way to show the spatial distribution of fill materials is currently as a two dimensional national/regional scale dataset. Depending on the distribution of data points, however, 3D modelling can be possible, which is much more detailed and accurate. Focusing on the heavily urbanised county of West Yorkshire in northern England, the assessment of opencast coal mining on the landscape and benefits of quantifying the impact are discussed. We demonstrate how certain types of publicly available data allow a greater understanding of the interaction between human activity and natural superficial and bedrock geology. If successful, this approach can help lessen the impact of delays and increased financial costs caused by unforeseen ground conditions.

‘Rule of thumb methods no longer suffice’: development of British coal industry education and training 1900–circa 1970 and lessons for present-day education policy-makers

This paper traces the origins and development of coal mining education and training in Britain from 1900 to the 1970s, by which time the coal industry had substantially declined. It looks at the progress from working-class self-help to national policy in support of education and training. The research makes use of college prospectuses and principals' reports to identify the kind of courses offered at several former mining and technical colleges located on the Lancashire and Yorkshire coalfields. The research also identifies funding available to those who worked in the industry, from new employees to those aspiring to be colliery and area managers. The paper also briefly summarises what policy-makers can learn from studying the former mining industry's education and training framework.

Saxon Violence and Social Decay in Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Tony Harrison’s Prometheus

Saxon Violence and Social Decay in Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Tony Harrison’s Prometheus Hallie Rebecca Marshall (bio) At first glance the dramatic works of Sarah Kane have little in common with those of Tony Harrison beyond their rejection of social realist drama. Even the history of their critical reception is completely at odds with one another. When Sarah Kane’s first play, Blasted, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995, the critical response was so vicious that it made headlines. Jack Tinker (1995) wrote in the Daily Mail: “For utterly and entirely disgusted I was by a play which appears to know no bounds of decency, yet has no message to convey by way of excuse.” When her second play, Phaedra’s Love, with which this paper is concerned, was staged at London’s Gate Theatre in 1996, the critical reception was no warmer. In contrast, Harrison’s first play in London, The Misanthrope, was effusively praised by critics. The “Commentary” section of the Times Literary Supplement (16 March 1973) wrote: It must be many years since London’s dramatic critics went out to praise the translation of a classic—the usual ploy is to insist how much has been lost in the process. This time, though, Tony Harrison has seen himself turned into the golden boy of theatre by his brilliant and concise rendition of Molière into rhyming couplets. Leaving aside the view of critics—though it should be noted that the reputations of both authors have been subjected to the shifting tides of critical opinion—these snippets of reviews point to the fundamental differences in approach that each author is known for. Harrison’s work in the theatre is associated with classical drama and traditional verse forms that have long since fallen out of fashion on the British stage. His drama depends upon form, language, and intertextual engagement with canonical texts of the Western theatrical tradition for its dramatic power. Kane’s plays on the other hand were on the forefront of what has become known as “In-Yer-Face Theatre” “or “New Brutalism,” which is marked by the [End Page 165] rejection of the norms of the contemporary British stage in terms of language and form while embracing explicit sexual and violent content. Despite the differences in the works of these two authors, this paper will argue that there is substantial overlap between two works produced in the 1990s: Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Harrison’s Prometheus. Both works are built upon classical models; Phaedra’s Love took Seneca’s Phaedra as its starting point, while Prometheus takes the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound as its primary intertext. While the ways in which the two authors engage with their classical models are very different, both use their work to engage with issues of social decay in post-Thatcherite Britain. That Harrison would choose a classical model comes as no surprise. Since his translation of Aeschylus’s Oresteia for Peter Hall’s production at the National Theatre in 1981, most of Harrison’s dramatic works have engaged with classical literature. Prometheus is Harrison’s first, and to date only, feature length film/poem. He had originally conceived of it, however, as a theatrical work. Michael Kustow (1999) has written of the original conception: “Tony wanted to do Aeschylus’s play in the open air, on the slag heaps of a Yorkshire coalfield. Ferrybridge was his site, with its coal mountains and cooling towers. The slag would become the Caucasus to which Prometheus would be chained.” When the play became instead a film, its geographical scope was expanded to well beyond the slag heaps and cooling towers of Ferry-bridge. Unlike the Aeschylean original, which takes place in a single location, Harrison’s film/poem ranges across Western and Eastern Europe, beginning at the slag heaps and cooling towers of Yorkshire and ending on the shores of Eleusis, birthplace of Aeschylus. The locations are unified by their all having been blighted by the destructive power of Prometheus’s gift to humankind, from the coalmines of Northern England to the decaying infrastructure of postindustrial Eastern Europe, from Dresden to Auschwitz. Prometheus, as in...

The Forests Before the Flood: The Palaeobotanical Contributions of Edmund Tyrell Artis (1789-1847)

Edmund Tyrell Artis is best known as an archaeologist who during the early nineteenth century made extensive excavations of Roman sites in the Nene Valley in Northamptonshire. However, his approach to archaeology had evolved from his earlier experiences collecting Carboniferous plant fossils. Between about 1816 and 1821, he amassed a major collection of plant fossils from the Yorkshire Coalfield and this formed the basis of a book entitled Antediluvian Phytology. This book was a landmark in British palaeobotany but was his only contribution to the subject. This was partly because of his growing archaeological interests and partly because of disagreements with William Buckland, one of the most influential geologists then in Britain.

Predicting Groundwater Rebound in the South Yorkshire Coalfield, UK

The semi-distributed model GRAM (groundwater rebound in abandoned mineworkings) has been applied to part of the South Yorkshire Coalfield, UK, to predict the pattern of groundwater rebound, in particular the timing and rates of changes in mine water flows between abandoned collieries. The model is based upon the mining hydrogeologist's concept of ‘ponds’ (discrete volumes of interconnected workings) and calculates water balances over time for all ponds in a multi-pond mined system. GRAM was successfully calibrated against observed groundwater levels over a 5 year period from 2001 to 2005 before being used to predict future rates of groundwater rebound, in accordance with different scenarios, including average, low, and high rainfall scenarios. The results reveal that it could take up to 22 years before an inflow of water occurs into the last remaining colliery in the area at Maltby, with the first surface discharge expected in approximately 15 years time from an old mine shaft. If Maltby is closed and pumping ceases across the area, then it could be 100 years before groundwater rebound is complete.

Wombwell: The Landscape History of a South Yorkshire Coalfield Township

An inter-disciplinary approach combining archival research and the use of field names with fieldwork and an understanding of the ecology allows the reconstruction of the landscape and farming economy of a South Yorkshire township before the development of the coalfield brought huge changes in the nineteenth century. Although no manorial or estate papers survive, two Tudor surveys, the archives of Trinity College, Cambridge, glebe terriers, and a tithe award and map are used to describe the pattern of open fields, river meadows, moors, assarts and a communal wood. Of particular interest is the way that the extensive floodplain was drained and farmed in communal ings, which made Wombwell 'an extent of agricultural ground remarkably rich and fertile'. No formal enclosure took place, as most of the township came under single ownership, but with the sale of the estate in lots in the late eighteenth century considerable changes in ownership and farming practices were introduced. These are examined through nineteenth- and twentieth-century crop returns and farm surveys held at The National Archives. Since the collapse of the coal-mining industry, regeneration projects have altered the landscape again and destroyed some of its inherited distinctiveness.

Herbert Heaton and Five Principles of The Yorkshire Coal-miners

'Herbert Heaton and Five Principles of the Yorkshire Coal-Miners'. Herbert Heaton, born in 1890, was the son of a Yorkshire coal-miner. He obtained his schooling with scholarships from the age of twelve, including an undergraduate career at the University of Leeds. He went on to become a leading economic historian. He taught on three Continents, spending the last thirty years of his career at the University of Minnesota in the United States. His father was not only a coal-miner, but also a lay preacher in the Primitive Methodist Church and active in the governance of his local co-operative. Heaton wrote and lectured about five principles he had learned and adopted as his own, growing up in the Yorkshire coalfields. The five principles reflect how many coal-miners before 1914 believed economic and social justice could be achieved. While the miners changed their beliefs after 1918, Heaton, who never lived in Britain after 1914, retained the Yorkshire principles of his youth.

Relationality, Place, and Absence: A Three-Dimensional Perspective on Social Memory

This article builds on recent work on memory and place in the social sciences. One emphasis in the literature on ‘Western’ forms of social memory has been on official, intentional sites of commemoration, such as war memorials and monuments. Based on fieldwork in the north of England with older residents of a former coal mining village, I approach social memory from a different perspective, emphasising the work of memory and its complex interactions with place, absence, social relations and social rupture. Like Village on the Border, this research has taken place in a setting that has undergone significant socio-economic change: the closure of the South Yorkshire coalfields. The embeddedness of local knowledge in social relations emerge in both Ronnie Frankenberg's work and my own and I explore these topics here in connection with what I term a ‘three-dimensionality of memory’.

Provenance of Upper Carboniferous sandstones in east Derbyshire: role of the Wales–Brabant High

SUMMARY Analysis of heavy mineral suites and palaeocurrents from Namurian and Westphalian (Millstone Grit and Coal Measures) sandstones at outcrop in eastern Derbyshire reveals four main sources of sediment supply to this part of the Pennine Basin. Three of these are known to have affected the adjacent Yorkshire Coalfield to the north, and were responsible for introducing sediment from distant source areas located in general terms to the north, west and south-east of the Pennine Basin. Northern sediment entered the basin both from the north and the east. The fourth source region was situated not far to the south of the basin, probably in the part of eastern Avalonia that included the Wales–Brabant High. Local sediment from different parts of this area was incorporated into both the westerly and northerly derived supplies at intervals through Namurian and Westphalian times. The northern source dominated through the Namurian and earliest Westphalian, providing the bulk of the Millstone Grit and lowest Coal Measures, but its influence waned in the early Langsettian, earlier in east Derbyshire than in Yorkshire. Local material, probably derived from the Wales–Brabant High to the south, was added to the northern sediment during the late Namurian and early Westphalian. Sediment from the western source first appeared in east Derbyshire in the Wingfield Flags (early Langsettian) and dominated Coal Measures deposition from the Kilburn Coal through to about the level of the Aegiranum Marine Band (i.e. from mid-Langsettian to end-Duckmantian). Sediment containing garnets of distinctive composition, and inferred to be of local southern origin in the Wales–Brabant High or a comparable region farther west, was apparently added to the western sediment through much of this period. A marked change took place at about the level of the Aegiranum Marine Band, with the incoming in early Bolsovian times of material from the Variscan orogen to the south-east. In Yorkshire, this transition took place earlier, at about the level of the Maltby Marine Band (late Duckmantian).

Socio-economic deprivation and excess winter mortality and emergency hospital admissions in the South Yorkshire Coalfields Health Action Zone, UK

The aims of this study were to describe the pattern of excess winter mortality and emergency hospital admissions in the South Yorkshire Coalfields Health Action Zone, and to examine the relationship between excess winter mortality and emergency hospital admissions and socio-economic deprivation at the enumeration district level. We analysed monthly deaths from 1981 to 1999 and monthly emergency hospital admissions from 1990 to 1999 for cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and all other causes of death for people aged 45 years and above. We used the enumeration district level Townsend socio-economic deprivation score to categorize enumeration districts by quintile. Excess winter mortality ratios (observed/expected) for females and males, respectively, were 1.70 and 1.58 for respiratory disease, 1.25 and 1.20 for cardiovascular disease, and 1.09 and 1.07 for all other causes of death. The excess winter hospital admission ratio for respiratory disease was 1.80 for females and 1.58 for males. No excess was evident for the other two groups of conditions. We found no significant increase in excess winter mortality ratios with increasing socio-economic deprivation. There was also no significant increase in the excess winter respiratory admission ratio with increasing deprivation. With regard to age, we found significant increases with increasing age in the excess winter mortality ratios for cardiovascular disease ( P<0.0001) and for all other diseases ( P<0.001), and also in the excess winter hospital admission ratio for respiratory disease ( P<0.0001). With regard to sex, the excess ratios were lower in men than in women for both respiratory mortality ( P<0.05) and respiratory hospital admissions ( P<0.0001). We also observed that excess winter mortality ratios decreased significantly over the 18-year period for cardiovascular disease ( P<0.05) and for all other diseases ( P<0.05). Our results suggest that measures to reduce excess winter mortality should be implemented on a population-wide basis and not limited to socio-economically deprived areas. There may also be a case for tailoring interventions to specifically meet the needs of older people.

'I'm still waiting...': barriers to accessing cardiac rehabilitation services.

The United Kingdom (UK) National Service Framework for coronary heart disease challenges health services to address existing problems regarding the quality and content of cardiac rehabilitation services. Concern also exists regarding inequalities in access to services. The South Yorkshire Coalfields Health Action Zone (SYCHAZ) funded this study to harness the views and experiences of staff and patients regarding existing services. The intention is to use the information gained to develop acceptable and accessible services for the future. To explore what barriers exist for patients in accessing cardiac rehabilitation services within the South Yorkshire Coalfield locality. Patients were identified and recruited with the assistance of staff responsible for their care. Informed consent was obtained prior to participation. Approval was obtained from the relevant Ethics Committees. Qualitative methods were used, including semi-structured interviews and Framework Analysis techniques. Purposive sampling was used to select participants. Semi-structured individual interviews of 15 staff and 20 postmyocardial infarction patients. One group interview with seven health visitors and two with lay members of heart support groups. Barriers to accessing cardiac rehabilitation. This study revealed a limited service capacity. Big gaps exist between patches of service activity that most patients appear to slip through. Problems in accessing the service were categorized into five themes: absence, waiting, communication, understanding, and appropriateness. Some groups fared worse in terms of access to services, for example women, the elderly and those in traditional working class coalfields communities. Professional and more affluent participants appeared better able to negotiate their way around the system by seeking out advice or 'going private'. The omission of medical staff and ethnic minority patients. Cardiac rehabilitation in the policy targets in UK will only be met with substantial investment to address the barriers identified here.

Barriers to uptake of services for coronary heart disease: qualitative study

Objectives: To identify factors within the South Yorkshire coalfields that influence use of health services by people with angina.Design: Qualitative study using semistructured individual and group interviews.Setting: General practice and...

Stratigraphic evolution of provenance characteristics in Westphalian sandstones of the Yorkshire Coalfield

SUMMARY A combined study of heavy minerals and palaeocurrents shows that three main fluvial systems transported sediment to the Pennine Basin during Namurian and Westphalian times. The first, which brought a garnet-rich monazitic heavy mineral suite from the north, peaked in the Namurian and diminished through the Langsettian. The second flowed from the west, bringing heavy mineral suites with low garnet, low monazite and variable amounts of chrome spinel. It started in the late Namurian, replaced the first system in the Langsettian, and dominated thereafter until it was itself replaced in the late Duckmantian by the third system. This brought a garnetiferous heavy mineral suite with both monazite and chrome spinel from the E or SE and continued to the top of the preserved sequence, in the late Bolsovian. The first sourceland lay to the north, perhaps between Laurentia and Baltica, and included high grade metasediments or charnockites and granites. The second sourceland lay to the west and included mature, pre-existing clastic sediments of Devonian and possibly Lower Palaeozoic age. Ultramafic rocks such as ophiolites, possibly associated with Lower Palaeozoic ocean closure, were periodically exposed there. The third sourceland lay to the south, probably within the uplifting Variscan orogenic belt. It included low to moderate grade metasediments, high-grade gneisses, granites and ultramafic rocks.

Groundwater rebound in the South Yorkshire coalfield: a first approximation using the GRAM model

The closures of three deep coal mines in the Rotherham area (South Yorkshire, UK), and the cessation of associated dewatering, have given rise to concerns over possible future pollution of ground‐ and/or surface‐water resources once groundwater rebound is complete. An assessment of the legitimacy of these concerns has been made by applying the recently developed, semi‐distributed computer model GRAM (Groundwater Rebound in Abandoned Mineworkings). The extent of workings and subsurface inter‐connections relating to the three principal collieries in the Rotherham area have been identified from mine plans, augmented by testimonies of former underground workers, and assessed in terms of their hydrogeological importance. GRAM was used to predict the rate of groundwater recovery in the workings, and the timing and flow‐rates of future surface discharges. The simulations predict that major surface discharges can be expected no sooner than the year 2005, and will eventually amount to around 3.9 Ml d −1 . It is also predicted that around 0.4 Ml d −1 of water will flow from the abandoned mine‐workings into nearby workings of Maltby Colliery. By analogy with discharges elsewhere associated with seams of similar sulphur content, it is considered that the ‘first flush’ water will contain around 200 mg/l total iron (maximum estimate 600 mg/l), declining eventually to around 20 mg/l total iron.

Generalizations of power-law distributions applicable to sampled fault-trace lengths: model choice, parameter estimation and caveats

Summary It has often been observed that fault-trace lengths tend to follow a power-law or Pareto distribution, at least for sufficiently large lengths. A very common method of fitting this type of model to data consists of plotting on log–log axes the number of faults with trace length greater than x against x, and reading off the slope of the resulting approximate straight line. We demonstrate that maximum likelihood is a more efficient and less biased method of estimating the power-law exponent. A further complication is that this log–log plot is often curved, suggesting that the power-law distribution is not a complete description of the data. In this paper we review the literature on probability distributions with Pareto behaviour for long trace lengths, but not necessarily for short trace lengths. The Feller–Pareto distribution is an attractive family within this class, with many well-known statistical distributions as special cases. We use maximum likelihood to fit the Feller–Pareto distribution to a sample of 1034 fault-trace lengths from the South Yorkshire coalfields. We conclude that the Burr III model superficially provides a satisfactory fit to these data. We also discuss an interpretation of the Feller–Pareto model in terms of a particular type of observational bias on data generated from the power-law distribution. However, there are a number of complications to be considered. In particular, geometrical sampling biases, stereological effects and spatial structure in the data mean that a rigorous analysis is not straightforward. We suggest ways in which future data collection and analysis may address some of these problems. If our sampling protocols and estimation procedures are adopted, geoscientists should be able to estimate the power-law exponent more accurately and more objectively than with current ad hoc procedures, and with more direct relevance to strain calculations and other geophysical applications. Furthermore, our recommended method of estimation, maximum likelihood, provides point estimates and associated standard errors of the unknown parameters, and is efficient, consistent and relatively straightforward to apply.