Genealogy Chat

Hi there,

Just some need some help please. I have a coal man who delivered coal using a sloops and would have collected it from collieries like elsecar and Rotherham. Would those collieries keep records of which ship collected and how much they collected and cost,
Thanks :-D

Pre-19th century[edit]

There is evidence of coal mining in the field as far back Roman period. Documentary evidence of medieval mining around Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield dates back to the 14th century. An example of this is permission granted by Sir John Fitzwilliam in 1367 for mining to take place on his estate near Elsecar south of Barnsley.[11] These mines were shallow shafts or adits that exploited the coal seams where they outcropped. The coal would have been used locally as a heating fuel or in the production of iron. This small scale mining persisted well into the late 1780s when the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam's colliery at Lawwood had only 19 "picks" or miners. The reason for the delay in development when compared to the coalfields of Northumberland and County Durham was that the area had poor access to water transport which was the only economic method of transport before the development of the railways.[12]

The first area of the coalfield to gain access to improved transportation was the southern edge when the River Don Navigation was canalised as far as Tinsley near Sheffield by 1740. This allowed the collieries near Rotherham to export their coal east to the English coast and beyond and west Sheffield. By 1769 300,000 tons of coal were exported from the southern area of the coalfield. The colliery owners to the south in Derbyshire cut the Chesterfield Canal from Chesterfield to join with the River Trent near Gainsborough in 1777 which allowed them to compete directly with the South Yorkshire Coalfield. This in turn forced the colliery owners in Southern Yorkshire to improve their access to the sea. They planned a canal running from Wakefield south through Barnsley to the River Don at Swinton east of Rotherham. The canal called the Dearne & Dove Canal was started in 1793 and completed in 1796. The canal with branches to Elsecar and Worsborough allowed collieries through the coal field to be expanded. This can be seen with sinking of the Elsecar New Colliery by the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam.

South Yorkshire Coalfield - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Yorkshire_Coalfield


This allowed the collieries near Rotherham to export their coal east to ... as ships moved increasingly to oil ... the time the collieries of South Yorkshire were ...
Geography and geology ·
Coal type and seams ·
History of the ... ·
Collieries

:-D

Good Practice suggests they did, but whether records have survived is another matter!

Consider contacting the National Coal Mining Museum to see if they can suggest relevant archives
https://www.ncm.org.uk/

Lovely thank you :-D