Tinsley Park Colliery Co
Tinsley Park Collieries were a group of coal mines situated in the Tinsley / Darnall area to the east of the City of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. [1]
1819 Earl Fitzwilliam's Estates were responsible for the sinking of a colliery at Tinsley, the same year in which the Greenland Arm of the Sheffield Canal was opened, the Earl being a major contributor. B. Huntsman acquired the lease to work coal.
1833 The pits, at that time, were basically 'Bell Pits' and situated throughout the area. The area having a network of small wagonways leading to the canal. In 1833 Booth and Co of Park Iron Works in nearby Attercliffe were shown in White’s Directory as the colliery proprietors; the coal being used to produce coke for their iron works. This iron works was bought out by Francis Huntsman
1846 Benjamin Huntsman, coal master(s) & dealers, Tinsley Coal Co. Office, Cattle Market, Sheffield [2].
1849 Colliery owners: Benjamin Huntsman and Co[3].
1852 The first shaft was sunk.
1898 The Tinsley Park Colliery company was registered on 23 April, to acquire the undertaking of the Tinsley Coal Co. [4]
1902 Further shafts were sunk in June 1902.
1909 Further shaft sunk.
Over its lifetime the colliery worked the Wath Wood, High Hazels, Parkgate, Haigh Moor and Barnsley seams.
1926 The Tinsley Park Colliery Co became associated with the newly formed Rotherham and District Collieries Association.[5]
In 1938 a loan was authorised to the Renishaw Iron Co, with in return, operational control of that company and the right to supply coke to them, were secured by the colliery Company. The following year Tinsley Park Colliery Company made an offer to acquire J. and G. Wells' Eckington Collieries, with pits at Holbrook, Norwood and Westthorpe.
Profits fell during the war years, a loss being recorded in 1943. Production costs had risen but outputs were down with many the men being in the Forces.
The colliery was closed in early 1943.
From its opening the collieries in Tinsley Park were connected to the Sheffield Canal by a series of wagonways. Two parallel lines headed south-east from the canal to serve these pits, the longest of these, some 1 1/4 miles in length reaching to the Peacock pit. The canal connection was still visible up to the 1990s.
A new railway, part of the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, was opened by the Duke of Portland in 1900. This was known as the Sheffield District Railway, a small but important line which ran between the North Midland Railway at Treeton and the Midland Railway at Brightside Junction, reaching a goods station via a spur from Grimesthorpe Junction. This line had short branches to many of the big works along its route, the longest of these at over a mile in length served Tinsley Park Colliery Company.
The colliery, from the end of the 19th century, had a battery of Simon-Carves recovery ovens at work and in 1913 a new battery of 40 regenerative ovens with recovery plant for tar and ammonia were built by the Koppers Coke Oven and By-Product Co of Sheffield. Steam for the Tinsley site was provided by two Lancashire boilers which were fitted with all that is necessary for gas firing, the gas coming from their own supplies.
By 1918 coke oven gas from the Tinsley ovens was being supplied to the Sheffield Gas Co. The ovens at Orgreave Colliery also began to supply them from 1922.