Barnsley Main Colliery engine house and pithead structures

Colliery winding engine house, headstocks and shaft head building, circa 1900 for Barnsley Main Colliery, modernised and reconstructed in 1956 for the National Coal Board.

MATERIALS: Brick with corrugated steel roof, steel headstocks. Concrete lintels and sills with steel windows: generally similar to the W20 design by Crittall.

PLAN: The engine house is three by four bays and lies to the south east of the shaft. It is detached from the smaller shaft-head building at ground floor level, but linked by a bridge at first floor level. The headstocks rise from the top of the shaft head building with its backstays rising from a buttress to the north west gable of the engine house.

EXTERIOR: Engine house: This has a tall ground floor which is mainly blind except for a wide entrance in the western gable and a doorway and pair of windows at high level on the northern side. The ground floor has a slight batter to the wall face and a high, simple plinth to the northern side. The upper floor is in a different brickwork and is of pier and panel construction with simple dog toothing to the tops of the panels. Window details are the same as those to the ground floor, most retaining their steel frames and glazing bars, and regularly spaced with four to the north, three to the south and two to the eastern gable. The date stone is central to the northern side and is a simple, small plaque reading 1956. The roof is topped by two steel ventilators.

Shaft head building: This also has a tall, mainly blind ground floor and an upper floor in later brickwork. Window openings (infilled with blockwork) are scattered and generally square. Extending upwards from the flat roof of the building is the steel enclosure for a pair of double deck cages, this being at the head of the shaft within the base of the headstocks. Above are the two pit winding wheels with a third, smaller, emergency winding wheel. The structure of the headstocks also includes maintenance gantries and walkways.

INTERIOR: Not accessible but reported to retain the electrically powered drum winder and associated equipment such as the hydraulics for the breaking system, the control cabin, and an overhead travelling gantry crane. At least one electrical control box has the maker's name "Metropolitan Vickers". The shaft retains its cages, gates and other control and maintenance equipment.