Carlton Main Colliery

Overview

A Barnsley pit that employed over 1,300 men in 1905 and was standing idle five years later, but whose name outlived it by more than a century: the company it named went on to sink Frickley and buy Grimethorpe, and the brass band still carries it.

History

Carlton Main stood two and a half miles north-east of Barnsley, worked by the Yorkshire and Derbyshire Coal and Iron Company, and by the mid-1890s was a substantial colliery: 1,113 employed in 1894, 1,289 by 1896 and 1,338 by 1905, working coking, gas, household and steam coals. Then it stopped. The official list for 1910 returns the colliery as standing, with seventy-two people on the books and nine of them below ground. The name did better than the pit. The Carlton Main Colliery Company became one of the strong South Yorkshire companies: Grimethorpe Colliery passed to it in 1896, and it began sinking two shafts on the Warde-Aldam estate at Frickley in March 1903, reaching the Barnsley seam and completing them on 24 May 1905. It also took on the South Elmsall village band, founded in 1884 and adopted by Frickley Colliery in 1905, which became and remains the Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band.

Geology

The pit worked the Yorkshire Coal Measures on the Barnsley side of the South Yorkshire coalfield, the ground whose Barnsley seam the company's later sinkings at Frickley and Grimethorpe were driven to reach.

Workings

The Durham Mining Museum records a No. 1 Pit. Employment of well over a thousand from 1894 to 1905, four fifths of them below ground, and coking, gas, household and steam coals in the returns.

Closure

The official List of Mines for 1910 returns the colliery as standing, with seventy-two people employed and only nine of them underground. No closure date has been located.

What remains

No account of the site as it now stands has been found, and no photograph. The colliery's name survives on the company and the band rather than on the ground.

No surface remains have been recorded.

Related mines

• Frickley Colliery — The Carlton Main Colliery Company began sinking Frickley's two shafts in March 1903 and completed them on 24 May 1905, reaching the Barnsley seam. The company took its name from this pit and its later life from that one.
• Grimethorpe Colliery — Grimethorpe was transferred to the Carlton Main Colliery Company in 1896, while this colliery was still employing over a thousand men; both of the company's acquisitions outlived it by nearly a century, working until 1993.

Nearby mines

• East Gawber Colliery — 3.4 km W
• Barnsley Main Colliery — 3.5 km S
• Ferrymoor Colliery — 3.5 km E
• Grimethorpe Colliery — 3.7 km SE
• Oaks Colliery — 4.4 km S

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The Durham Mining Museum's returns from the official Lists of Mines show 1,113 employed in 1894, 1,289 in 1896, 1,266 in 1900 and 1,338 in 1905 — and then, in 1910, seventy-two, of whom nine were below ground, the colliery marked as standing. ¹
• Grimethorpe Colliery was transferred to the Carlton Main Colliery Company in 1896, and the company began sinking two shafts at Frickley in March 1903, completing them on 24 May 1905 at the Barnsley seam. Both of those pits worked until 1993. ²
• The band now called Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band started in 1884 as the South Elmsall village band, most of its players coming from South Kirkby Colliery. Frickley Colliery adopted it in 1905, and the Carlton Main Colliery Company built up both the band and the pit in the years that followed. Accounts differ on when the present name was settled, one putting it at 1923 and another at 1924. ³

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Carlton Main Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Frickley Colliery — Wikipedia
3. (secondary) 4BR Time Team - 125 years of Carlton Main — 4barsrest.com

Record created: 10 September 2026 · Last researched: 10 September 2026