Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Wednesday 05 June 1889
The New Colliery at Conisborough.
The new colliery at Conisborough, projected by the Denaby Main Colliery Company, is making satisfactory progress. Already the Cadeby “Rattles” has undergone a considerable transformation, and what was a few weeks ago grass fields now presents a busy and quite different appearance.
Close on 100 men are being employed in taking the initial steps to sinking the shaft. The foundations for the permanent engines are nearly completed, tons of concrete having been deposited during last week or so.
Not very much progress bee yet been made with the shaft, which is only a few yards deep. A considerable number of masons are engaged in dressing the stone that will be required, and will all be obtained from the valuable quarries adjoining the “Rattles.”
Two shafts will be the up-cast shaft and the down cast shaft, and that they will 660 yards deep. Coal is now reached at Denaby, nearly two miles away, at the depth of 450 yards, but the coal measures from there, east to west, dips the rate of 100 yards every mile. The Copley estate, which will the principle field of the new operations, contains some 4,000 acres of coal, and is slated that another colliery will established at the ” Anchorage” on the other side of the estate from Conisborough, so that the field can be worked from the two extreme points. It will be nearly two years half before coal is reached, and some five years before the place is in thorough going order, capable of turning out tons of coal a day at each shaft.
The Barnsley bed having been reached, a “drift” will be driven to the extremity of the Copley estate, and the pit will then be worked on the Staffordshire principle, which is that the coal will first won from points furthest from the shaft bottom, and progress made towards the centre, instead of, as Denaby and other collieries in South Yorkshire, the coal being obtained from the nearest point and working outwards.
Of course the expense of these drifts will be considerable, and much less profitable at first, but as the miners begin to work their way towards the pit bottom then will the advantage of this system be apparent.
The part left behind will not need by to be sustained by “packs,” etc as has to be done at present, and all “dirt” and “muck” can left behind in safety. All the men employed at the present operations are engaged by the company direct, and it not thought that much of the work will be let by contract. In the sinking, however, labour so much a yard will be contracted for.
Some 150 houses are already in course construction off the highway between Conisborough and Denaby, and this number will be shortly increased to 400.