| Summary : Caphouse Colliery, now the National Coal Mining Mueum, is on the western edge of the Yorkshire coalfield and incorporates three sites; Caphouse Pit, Hope Pit and Inman Shaft. Caphouse Pit was sunk in the 1770s or 1780s, the others in the early 19th century. In 1827 Sir John Lister Lister Kaye leased the coal and these and other pits were known as Denby Grange Colliery. The beam engine house of 1840-41 at Inman Shaft, sunk to pump water from Hope Pit, survives, but none of the mid 19th-century buildings at the other pits, and little of the colliery railway of 1853-4. At Caphouse Pit the steam winding engine house, boiler yard, chimney, stone heapstead and ventilation shaft, all completed in 1876 for Emma Lister Kaye, survive, as does a small store built shortly afterwards. Between 1905 and 1911 the timber headgear of the main shaft at Caphouse Pit was renewed and a timber-framed screens building erected nearby, and at Hope Pit, which became the air shaft to both pits, new surface buildings included a fan house and electric winding engine house. The Colliery was sold in 1907 and over the next 25 years coal drops were built, the sidings enlarged and in 1937-8 pithead baths and an administration block were built. Buildings and plant were upgraded by new owners between 1943 and 1946, the work continuing after Nationalisation, a drift mine being opened in 1974. The Colliery closed in 1985 and opened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988. In 1995 it was designated the National Coal Mining Museum for England after Chaterley Whitfield Museum closed. |