Orgreave Colliery

Orgreave Colliery platform was a workman's halt built to serve the miners working at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire, England. These workmen's trains or "Paddy Mails" were operated between Sheffield Victoria and Treeton Colliery at shift change times being hauled along the main line to Orgreaves Colliery Sidings (the extra 's' being added by the railway in error but never corrected) where the main line locomotive was exchanged for one belonging to the colliery company, usually "Rothervale No.6" which was fitted with vacuum brakes. The platform was situated almost at the bottom of an incline with a gradient of approx. 1 in 27 to be climbed to reach the main line with the return trains. It was often the case that the train was reversed a short distance to more level track to give it a run at the gradient and a banking locomotive provided, sometimes on damp days too. The "Paddy Mails" ceased running in May 1932 due to parts of the bridges between Orgreave and Treeton being washed away when the River Rother flooded. The line was repaired but the "Paddy Mails" were not re-introduced, being replaced by "Pit Buses" operated by Sheffield Corporation along the main routes from the city centre and the local area. One of the "Paddy Mails" was involved in an accident on 13 December 1926.

Rotherwood exchange sidings were set at the eastern extremity of the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electric railway between Orgreave Lane and Retford Road, on the south eastern boundary of the City of Sheffield with the Parish of Orgreave, within Rotherham. The sidings, located approximately at milepost 46¾ (measured from Manchester Piccadilly), consisted of two sets of lines split between the up and down sides of the line, and were laid out for the purpose of locomotive changing on trains passing through the area. Originally steam, later diesel locomotives brought trains, particularly coal from the Nottinghamshire coalfield to the down sidings, where the motive power was changed to electric traction for the run over Woodhead to Mottram yard where it was changed again for steam (later diesel) to continue its journey. The returning empty traffic was changed over in the up sidings. Entry to the down sidings was by Permissive block regulations from Woodhouse East Junction and on busy days trains would queue for the full distance. The sidings were controlled by a British Railways built signal box set at the east end of the up sidings on the down side of the line.

The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.Journalist Alastair Stewart has characterised it as "a defining and ghastly moment" that "changed, forever, the conduct of industrial relations and how this country functions as an economy and as a democracy". Most media reports at the time depicted it as "an act of self-defence by police who had come under attack". In 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) reported that there was "evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers".Historian Tristram Hunt has described the confrontation as "almost medieval in its choreography ... at various stages a siege, a battle, a chase, a rout and, finally, a brutal example of legalised state violence".71 picketers were charged with riot and 24 with violent disorder. At the time, riot was punishable by life imprisonment. The trials collapsed when the evidence given by the police was deemed "unreliable". Gareth Peirce, who acted as solicitor for some of the pickets, said that the charge of riot had been used "to make a public example of people, as a device to assist in breaking the strike", while Michael Mansfield called it "the worst example of a mass frame-up in this country this century".In June 1991, the SYP paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners for assault, wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution.Following the 2016 inquest verdict into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, previously censored documents suggesting links between the actions of senior SYP officers at both incidents were published. This led to renewed calls for a public inquiry to be held into the actions of the police at Orgreave.In October 2016, in an Oral Answer to a Question in the House of Commons, a written ministerial statement to the House of Commons and Lords, and in a letter to the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC), Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced there would be no statutory inquiry or independent review. In 2016, Alan Billings, the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, admitted that the SYP had been "dangerously close to being used as an instrument of state".Despite the police evidence subsequently being deemed unreliable in court, there still exists a body of opinion that the police at Orgreave "were upholding the law in the face of intimidation from thousands of strikers".

Waverley is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in the southeastern part of the county of South Yorkshire, England. It is situated about 140 miles (230 km) north of London, 3.52 miles (5.66 km) from Rotherham town centre and 3.96 miles (6.37 km) from Sheffield City Centre. The parish was formed on 1 April 2019 from parts of the parishes of Catcliffe and Orgreave. The Advanced Manufacturing Park has been developed in the area of the later parish since the 2000s, partly on land reclaimed from a former opencast coal mine.

Treeton railway station is a former railway station in the centre of Treeton, Rotherham, England.

Orgreave is a village and civil parish on the River Rother in South Yorkshire. It is in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, about 4.5 miles (7 km) east of the centre of Sheffield and a similar distance south of the centre of Rotherham. The 2011 Census recorded its population as 739. This is a slight decline since the 2001 Census, which recorded its population as 761.

Catcliffe is a village and civil parish on the north-west bank of the River Rother in South Yorkshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 2,108. It is in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, approximately 2.5 miles (4 km) south of the town of Rotherham and 4.3 miles (7 km) east of Sheffield City Centre.

Catcliffe railway station is a former railway station in the Catcliffe area of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England.

The Orgreave Train Collision occurred on 13 December 1926 near Orgreave Colliery signal box on the Great Central Railway line about 4+1⁄2 miles (7.2 km) east of Sheffield. A goods train had collided with a preceding goods train on the same line, and the wreckage had obstructed the adjacent passenger line. A workmen's train, known as a paddy mail, ran into the wreckage; paddy mails were workmen's trains operated in connection with all three shift changes at the collieries. These were hauled from Sheffield Victoria, as far as Orgreaves Colliery Sidings by the main line company, using whatever locomotive was available. At this point the colliery's own locomotives took over and in connection with this operation 'Rothervale No.6' was fitted with vacuum brakes. The train then ran to Orgreave Colliery platform and Treeton Colliery.

The Catcliffe Glass Cone is a glass cone in the village of Catcliffe in South Yorkshire, England. It is the oldest surviving structure of its type in Western Europe, and it is a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Ancient Monument. Only three other glass cones survive in the United Kingdom; at Lemington, Wordsley and Alloa.The glassworks cone was part of the Catcliffe glassworks, which was established in 1740 by William Fenney. Fenney had previously been the manager of the glassworks at Bolsterstone that was owned by his mother-in-law. The site at Catcliffe was chosen in part because the terms of her will prevented him from setting up a glassworks within 10 miles (16 km) of the works at Bolsterstone and Catcliffe is 10.5 miles (16.9 km) away. The glassworks closed c.1887, but was reopened briefly in 1900. The brick cone has archways around the base to allow maximum air entry. It is approximately 20 metres (66 ft) high.Although glassmaking is an ancient process, it was carried out on a small scale until the development of industrialised methods in Europe allowed it to be mass-produced. The fusion of silica and sodium oxide in a furnace was usually achieved by the burning of wood; but coal was often used instead in Britain, which prompted the development of the glass cone. Glass cones consisted of a large central furnace, a flue to carry waste gas to the top of the structure and away, smaller furnaces around the walls to ensure the finished products stayed warm, and a circular platform on which workers stood while making their glassware. Although invented earlier, they became commonplace in the early 19th century; but further innovations in the glassmaking industry made the float glass production method more efficient and allowed manufacture to be based in fewer but larger works. Most cones were knocked down after they fell out of use, and by the mid-1970s only four survived: the Alloa cone (the only example in Scotland), Catcliffe Glass Cone, Lemington Glass Cone in Tyne and Wear, and Red House Cone in Wordsley, West Midlands.In the First World War the site was used as a prisoner-of-war camp and, as a canteen during the 1926 United Kingdom general strike. The cone was threatened with demolition in the 1960s so the foundations of the other buildings that comprised the glassworks were excavated in 1962. In 1968 the cone received Grade I listing.Access to the site was closed in 2006 as bricks were falling from the top of the structure. Restoration work was undertaken in 2014.

Treeton is a village and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. It is located about 4 miles (6 km) south of the town of Rotherham and 5 miles (8 km) east of Sheffield City Centre.

The Church of St Helen is the parish church in the village of Treeton in South Yorkshire, England. It is a Church of England church in the Diocese of Sheffield. The building is Grade I listed building and dates back to at least the 12th century AD. It is a prominent feature within the village, and can be seen from all directions.