Earthwatcher's photos with the keyword: coalmining

Where Brookhouse Colliery used to be

02 Jul 2006 752
A view of 'Pithouse West' opencast coal site taken on 12th March 1993 looking northwards roughly in the area where Brookhouse Colliery (deep mine) used to be. The opencast mining was carried out to recover shallow coal from the site of the former colliery: coal too thin and shallow to have been mined by conventional underground methods. The former colliery site also included waste tips, slurry lagoons and coke ovens, all of which were removed and their remains buried deep within the backfill of the opencast site. The picture shows the Clowne coal seam with the overburden removed, ready for lifting and loading into trucks. The white scar in the middle of the picture is a fault - a natural fracture in the rocks displacing the coal seam down to the right-hand side of the picture. After the opencast site was finished in the mid-1990s, the site was restored to form part of the Rother Valley Country Park. Scanned from Kodachrome 64 transparency film.

Water sampling

30 May 2006 214
There are quite a few ochrous discharges from abandoned mine workings in and around the City. This one is the culverted drainage outfall from the abandoned Moss Mine (ganister and coal) in Ryecroft Glen, Dore, Sheffield.

Early demise of the Coal Industry?

28 Jun 2006 279
This greeted everyone who came to the main colliery office entrance at Brookhouse.

Coke ovens 3

28 Jun 2006 350
Coal from Brookhouse Colliery was made into coke at the adjacent coke ovens. Rams push the red-hot coke into a hopper mounted on rails. The hopper is electrically driven - you can see the locomotive and its electric pickup - and is transported a few tens of metres away to the cooling area where jets of water are sprayed onto the coke to cool it. It is then loaded into lorries or wagons to go to the steel works. The coke ovens were closed and dismantled in the late 1980s. The land was opencasted to recover the shallow coal and then restored to make the Rother Valley Country Park.

Colliery waste

28 Jun 2006 300
Waste tip with Brookhouse shaft in the background. The mine was closed in the late 1980s. The land was opencasted to recover the shallow coal and then restored to make the Rother Valley Country Park.

Coke ovens 2

28 Jun 2006 415
Coal from Brookhouse Colliery was made into coke at the adjacent coke ovens. Rams push the red-hot coke into a hopper mounted on rails. The hopper is electrically driven (via the pair of overhead wires in the centre of the picture) and is transported a few tens of metres away to the cooling area where jets of water are sprayed onto the coke to cool it. It is then loaded into lorries or wagons to go to the steel works. The coke ovens were closed and dismantled in the late 1980s. The land was opencasted to recover the shallow coal and then restored to make the Rother Valley Country Park.

Coke ovens 1

28 Jun 2006 382
Coal from Brookhouse Colliery was made into coke at the adjacent coke ovens. Rams push the red-hot coke into a hopper mounted on rails. The hopper is electrically driven (via the pair of overhead wires in the centre of the picture) and is transported a few tens of metres away to the cooling area where jets of water are sprayed onto the coke to cool it. It is then loaded into lorries to go to the steel works. The coke ovens were closed and dismantled in the late 1980s. The land was opencasted to recover the shallow coal and then restored to make the Rother Valley Country Park.