Barnsley Main Colliery engine house and pithead structures

This is a colliery winding engine house, headstocks, and shaft head building, dating from around 1900 and originally built for Barnsley Main Colliery. It was modernised and reconstructed in 1956 for the National Coal Board.

The building is constructed of brick with a corrugated steel roof, and steel headstocks. Concrete lintels and sills are present alongside steel windows, generally matching the W20 design by Crittall.

The engine house is arranged in a three-by-four bay layout and is situated to the southeast of the main shaft. It is detached from the smaller shaft-head building at ground floor level, but the two are linked by a bridge at first floor. The headstocks rise directly from the shaft head building, with backstays extending from a buttress to the northwest gable of the engine house.

The engine house features a tall ground floor, largely blank except for a wide entrance in the western gable and a doorway and pair of windows at a high level on the northern side. The ground floor has a slight outward slope to the wall face and a prominent plinth on the northern side. The upper floor is built with different brickwork, employing a pier and panel design with simple dog toothing at the tops of the panels. The windows on the upper floor are consistent in design with those on the ground floor, retaining steel frames and glazing bars and being regularly spaced, with four on the north side, three on the south, and two on the eastern gable. A date stone, a simple small plaque reading 1956, is centrally located on the northern side. The roof is topped by two steel ventilators.

The shaft head building also has a tall, primarily blank ground floor and an upper floor constructed in later brickwork. Window openings, now infilled with blockwork, are scattered and generally square. Rising from the flat roof of the building is a steel enclosure housing a pair of double-deck cages, positioned at the head of the shaft and forming the base of the headstocks. Above this are the two main pit winding wheels, alongside a smaller emergency winding wheel. The headstock structure also includes maintenance gantries and walkways.

The interior is not currently accessible, but it is reported to retain the electrically powered drum winder and associated equipment, including hydraulics for the breaking system, a control cabin, and an overhead travelling gantry crane. At least one electrical control box bears the maker's name "Metropolitan Vickers." The shaft itself still contains its cages, gates, and other control and maintenance equipment.