Treeton Colliery

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.

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

Woodhouse Mill railway station was opened in 1840 by the North Midland Railway on its line between Rotherham Masborough and Chesterfield. It was situated to the south of the main A57 road shortly after this left the City of Sheffield and served Woodhouse Mill, near Sheffield, Orgreave, Fence and (Aston cum Aughton), all within Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It may initially have been simply a halt, but the Midland Railway installed an island platform with a timber and brick booking office at its centre. Nearby was Orgreave Coke Works and Fence Colliery. It closed in 1953.The station was located between that at Treeton and the original North Midland station at Beighton. The line is still in use today but has been a freight only route since July 1954, although it is very occasionally used as a diversionary route and by excursions not calling at Sheffield. It serves as a bypass line which keeps freight trains away from the congested lines through central Sheffield.

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.

Fence Colliery was a small colliery sunk at the lower end of the village of Fence, South Yorkshire, England alongside the main Sheffield to Worksop road in the 1840s, shortly before the opening of the North Midland Railway through the Rother Valley.

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.

Orgreave Colliery was a coal mine situated adjacent to the main line of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway about 5 miles (8 km) east of Sheffield and 3.5 miles (6 km) south west of Rotherham. The colliery is within the parish of Orgreave, from which it takes its name.

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.

Rother Vale Collieries were a group of coal producing pits originally in the Rother Valley parishes of Treeton, Woodhouse and Orgreave, nowadays on the south east Sheffield / Rotherham boundary, in South Yorkshire, England. In the early 20th century a new colliery at Thurcroft was developed. The Fence Colliery Company was formed in 1862 with the purchase of Fence Colliery, a small coal pit sunk alongside the main Sheffield to Worksop road at the lower end of the village of Fence. This pit had already been in operation for over 20 years and under new ownership was considerably developed. It closed as a coal producing unit in 1904, coal from its reserves being brought to the surface at Orgreave, but it was retained as a pumping station and later became the National Coal Boards workshops, finally closing in the 1990s. Orgreave Colliery, then a small concern, was bought by the company in 1870. It was situated less than a mile from Fence, adjacent to the main line of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, to the west of Woodhouse. It was joined to this railway by a steeply graded but short branch line. Five years after the purchase of Orgreave colliery the company changed its name and became Rother Vale Collieries Limited extending its empire just two years on with the sinking of a new pit at Treeton. A railway branch was constructed by well-known contractors Logan and Hemingway between Orgreave and Treeton to link the collieries to the Midland Railway at Treeton. In order to gain a foothold in the traffic at Treeton the M.S.& L.R. gained authorisation for a branch line, unusually, under its "Extension to London" Act, 1893. This opened for traffic, including the Paddy Mail, on 10 October 1898. Moving further eastwards the Rother Vale Colliery Company began the sinking of a new colliery at Thurcroft in 1909. Although the Barnsley seam was reached in 1913 extraction became difficult. The point of sinking was situated over a large geological fault which had thrown the coal out of its normal position. In 1918 the United Steel Companies was formed and the following year, along with steel making interests in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, Rother Vale Collieries became part of the group.

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.